The Sacred And The Profane
by afrai
Summary: Somewhere else the happy ending was different.
1. Prologue

Author: afrai   
Rating: R   
Summary: Somewhere else the happy ending was different. An AU work-in-progress.   
Feedback: makes me not hate my fic and break my pens (metaphorically speaking.) If you don't want to use the built-in ff.net review form, send it to civilisedsyllabub@yahoo.co.uk.   
Archive: Ask me, if you want.   
Disclaimer: All characters belong to Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, distorted though they are now.   
Warnings: Slash, evil, melodrama, largely off-screen violence. The usual.   
Notes: I blame Mel, keeper of wonders, and the people of CrowleysAngels. 

* * * 

**The Sacred And The Profane**

* * *

PROLOGUE 

The Bible is written from the human point of view. Among other things, this explains why it begins with the creation of the Earth. 

This was before the beginning. 

Before there was anything as humans know it, Lucifer fell. 

As you can imagine, there was no end of a row in Heaven. 

The angels did not gather, since there was no space to gather in. This was before creation, remember. But if there _had_ been space, and they _could_ have gathered, there would have been seas of amassed angels, watching with eyes they didn't have as Lucifer was thrown out of a place that wasn't there. 

It's difficult to picture the occurrence in human terms, but the state of Heaven at the moment could be likened to that of a crowd watching a public hanging. There was horror. There was interest. There was excitement. There was selfish, grovelling, consuming terror. 

And in some angelic minds, there was a question. 

There was one angel who was thinking a question. He was a Principality, although his kind would only get that name later, when the lines were drawn and coloured in. Now he was just another angel, who watched the angel who would be Satan and thought. 

Before the beginning, before the creation of material things, thoughts were as real as planets. If you thought the wrong thought, the planets could collide and turn to dust. You could cause a catastrophic supernova with a brain twitch. 

He could have chosen a different path. Angels have free will, just like the wingless mortals who came later. Otherwise there wouldn't be demons. Demons aren't born; they're made. 

He could have thought a different thought. In another universe he did. 

Here, he did not. 

Lucifer raged, and the angel thought, 

_If that could happen to the Morningstar . . ._

In another universe, the thought stopped there. The angel remained an angel, although occasionally he was disturbingly wrathful. 

Here, it did not. 

_If that could happen to the Morningstar . . ._

_. . . what about _me_?_

And the angel turned to dust.


	2. Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1 

Long after the beginning, there was a bookshop in Soho. 

It sold rare books. It specialised in books of prophecy. Like all rare bookshops, it smelled unpleasantly of stew and silverfish, and it apparently opened every time Halley's comet dropped by. 

The owner of the bookshop had clear blue eyes and a pale, serious face. It was a face that looked like it belonged in a stained glass window, which does not mean it was beautiful, but that it had the distant, alien glow usually associated with holiness. There were comfortingly human smile wrinkles around his eyes and mouth, however, and he wore a lot of tweed, which is a good way to look as if you don't belong in a stained glass window. 

He had a very sweet smile. He was smiling now, as he stacked the books with a light, loving touch. He caressed them with affection, as if they were living things. He was a being who respected the finer things of life. 

It was ten a.m. An 'open' sign hung inside the shop window. It was shiny with disuse and looked strange in the usually empty space. 

Outside, two men glared at the sign. 

At least, they looked like men. Sort of. They looked like pictures of men by someone who had had little experience of men, except in their most tortured, twisted poses. It looked like he'd tried his best to make them look normal, but there was still a hint of agony in their expressions. They walked like beings unused to having only two legs. If it was possible to lurk in broad daylight, they were lurking. 

One of them held a basket. 

"I don't see why we should of come to him," grumbled the taller one. "In broad daylight, too. In the middle of a _street_. He should of come to us. We should of done it at night, in a graveyard, proper. This is all -- _right_." 

"Well, you know how he is," said the shorter, hunched one. He looked distinctly uneasy, and not only because of the sunlight. "You can't tell him anything. They told him, they told him all about it, and he said, come to the bookshop in the morning. And not too early, either, he said." 

"They should of told him off," said the taller one. "Who's he to order us around, I'd like to know?" 

"Oh, so you'd like to argue with him, would you?" said the other witheringly. "Why didn't you give him a piece of your mind, then?" 

The taller one seemed to shudder at the thought. 

"'S not my business," he muttered. "I'm just the messenger. And he gives me the creeps. He's not right in the head, that one." 

"None of us are right in the head," the shorter one pointed out. 

"Yeah, but that's just normal. Most of us are just crazy," said the taller one. "We're not _insane_. He's as bad as an _angel_, smiling all the time. Someone should do something about him." 

"He does his job," said the shorter one. "Anyway, who'd be the one to do it? Only Sa -- _He_ would have the balls to face him, I reckon. See even Beelzebub telling him off, do you?" He stared blankly at the window, swinging the basket. In it, something stirred. 

"Where _is_ he, anyway?" he said. "This is the time, isn't it? He said, come here _now_ . . ." 

The door to the shop swung open. The owner stood in the doorway, blinking amiably in the sunlight until he saw the two strangers. 

He smiled. It was a sweet smile -- a terribly sweet smile. It reached his eyes, where it split into a horrible cracked brightness, like the shards of a broken mirror. 

"Why, Hastur and Ligur," he said, in a golden voice. His vowels were beautifully rounded; you could have cut cheese with his enunciation. "I've been waiting for you." 

The Dukes of Hell looked at each other nervously. Ligur clutched his basket as if it could save him. 

"All hail Satan," Hastur said. His voice cracked. 

"All hail Satan," said Zirah sweetly. "Won't you come in?" 

They did. The fallen angel looked out at the street, his eyes bright and as empty as a pit where the bottom is the sky. He smiled again. 

The door closed. 

* * *

The inside of the bookshop was dimly lit and smelled like the taste at the back of one's throat after an exciting night. The windows were covered with dust. An air of slightly worn gentility hung over everything like a mist. 

Hastur and Ligur fidgeted uncomfortably, looking even more unnatural than they had outside. In contrast, Zirah looked like the place had grown up around him. This was, in fact, more or less the truth. 

He bustled -- there was no other word for it -- bustled around the shop, dragging stools out of dark corners, making ineffectual swipes at dust-covered surfaces. A cheerful muttering accompanied his movements. 

"It's a little messy, isn't it? You must forgive me; I don't get many visitors, especially since the turn of the century. Nobody appreciates books any more, do they? They'd rather sit around and listen to the wireless, or whatever they call that newfangled contraption. I can't see the attraction in a mere box, to tell you the truth, but I've never claimed to understand humans. There you are. Do make yourselves comfortable. Can I offer you a cup of tea? Or maybe something stronger?" 

He beamed at the demons, waving a porcelain tea-pot encouragingly. They stared back, with the stony expression peculiar to stubborn ten-year-olds and Secret Service agents. 

Hastur briefly considered recounting the Deeds of the Day, but he dismissed the idea. There were _flowers_ on the tea-pot. Blue flowers. With little bells. 

He glared at Ligur, who hastily grabbed the basket and set it on the counter with an ominous thud. It was a very good thud. It had strange harmonics in it. There was the suggestion of a distant scream of agony. 

Ligur had always been good at the little details. 

"Here It is," the demon said sullenly. He was obviously as disturbed by Zirah as Hastur was. All that inane prattling. And the shape of his _mind_ . . . . 

The creature in the basket stirred again. Zirah's eyes widened. A soft, wonderful light broke over his face. He stepped forward. 

"Is it? Oh, it _is_ . . ." Zirah put the tea-pot down absently and picked the baby up. He gazed at the Antichrist with the slightly stunned expression of someone who had got everything he'd always wanted, and was enjoying it. 

"It's so _small_," he crooned in the reverent whisper only a true worshipper of babies can manage. "Here you are. What a little sweetheart you are. Yes you _are_." The baby, apparently unflattered, started crying with a thin, persistent wail. 

"Don't cry, don't cry," said Zirah, distressed. He seemed to have forgotten the existence of Hastur and Ligur entirely. "You're a little man, aren't you? Yes, and we'll give you milk and diapers and--" he groped for things babies liked -- "pacifiers, and possibly something to chew on to encourage the healthy growth of teeth. And soothing music by Mozart. You mustn't cry. Shh. There, there." 

The two other demons exchanged glances as Zirah cooed over the crying baby. Their discomfort was being rapidly replaced by annoyance. 

"'S a disgrace, the way he acts," Hastur muttered. "What is he, a nursemaid? Belial knows why he got kicked out of Heaven in the first place . . ." 

"No, he doesn't," Ligur said. "Belial is as stumped by him as the rest of us -- _bless_ it, what the fuck are you _doing_?" 

Zirah had hoisted the baby up in the crook of his left arm, propping up its softly fuzzed head. In his right hand, he held aloft a book. A thick book. It was a book that could have brained a well-sized burglar. What it could do to an infant, even the spawn of Satan, was not to be imagined. 

The demons could imagine it all too well. 

Zirah said vaguely, 

"He won't stop crying." 

"And you're going to stop him by _killing_ him?" Hastur said. 

Zirah stared at him in wide-eyed innocence. He looked puzzled. 

"Why not?" 

Hastur and Ligur stared at the third demon incredulously. The baby blinked up at Zirah with unfocused eyes. Zirah's grip on the book did not loosen. 

"You'd--" 

With a horrible rush of knowledge, Hastur knew he would. Zirah _would_ kill a baby just to stop him crying, and just because there happened to be a conveniently-sized encyclopaedia at hand. He wouldn't do it because he enjoyed it; he wouldn't stop because it was the son of Satan and there'd literally be Hell to pay for. He'd do it, because he was a mad bugger and anyone with a mind shaped like that would do anything. Then he'd probably wash his hands and fuss about the carpet and offer them another cup of tea, and Satan knew what he'd do with the body . . . . 

"Because -- because he's the _Antichrist_, that's why not," Ligur sputtered. "We need him! He's the whole _point_! And the shit would hit the fan if you -- oh, no, you don't, put the book _down_ . . . ." 

"You'd never get the blood out of the covers," said Hastur, distantly. 

Zirah stopped. He looked at the book he held. 

"Why, yes. I didn't think of that," he said. He sounded amused at his own lack of foresight. "How silly of me. That would simply spoil the book for anything. Well, then, I had better get him a bottle of milk, hadn't I?" He put the book down gently and held the baby up. "How does that sound? Some nice, warm milk? Yes, you'd like that, wouldn't you? Soon chase that nasty frown away." 

He wrapped an arm around the infant's bottom and boosted it up so that its tiny head lolled on his shoulder. He seemed about to meander happily away to find some milk, but Hastur croaked, 

"Wait." He held up a clipboard. "Signature." 

Zirah blinked. 

"Ah, yes, of course." He picked up a pen from the counter, tried to sign his name, found that the pen didn't write, scratched it vainly on the paper, put it down, picked up another pen, went through the entire pantomime again, swore, took a third pen, and signed his name. 

His signature was as neat as print. You could read it quite easily, but what it said wasn't something you'd want to remember. It glowed disturbingly for a moment, then faded. 

Hastur hid the clipboard in the recesses of his mack again and got up to leave. Ligur was already at the door, bouncing on his heels in nervousness. 

"Are you sure you won't stay for a drink?" said Zirah. "I have some whiskey in the back room -- no? Perhaps some brandy instead?" 

"No," said Hastur flatly. "We must be going." He hesitated. "Er. Look after the. It." 

He couldn't think of how to say, "Don't kill the Antichrist or all the demons of hell will be after you," in a way that would actually leave an impression on Zirah. Zirah looked like all the demons of hell had already been after him, and he'd survived, but not all of him. His sanity, for example, had definitely been lost along the way. 

And Hastur really, really didn't want to sound threatening. Not to someone with Zirah's mind. 

There are some things that even demons are afraid of. 

"Don't you worry about the child," said Zirah comfortably. "He'll be all right with me." 

_As long as he doesn't cry too loud, is that it?_ Hastur thought, but did not say. He said, 

"Yeah. Er. Right." 

Then he was gone. 

Alone in the dark bookshop, Zirah cooed to the Antichrist, 

"Milk, then. And some brandy for your Uncle Zirah." He put loving arms around the infant, and seemed be struck by a sudden thought. 

"Caphriel's going to _die_ when he hears about you," he said. 

Chuckling, he shuffled off to the back room.


	3. Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2 

Two days ago, the angel Caphriel roamed the city. 

He was not particularly angelic in appearance. He had dark hair and good cheekbones and the kind of smile that is usually described as 'ironic', or perhaps 'wry.' He was thin, and very, very British in a way that recalled a thousand drugged out rock stars. He wore black a lot. 

He never took off his sunglasses. 

Today, like every other day, he was doing his job. 

At 3:17 a.m., he visited a thirteen-year-old girl dying of cancer and had a vigorous discussion with her about the virtues of glittery nail polish versus matte. They both agreed that matte, while elegant, was boring, and also that black nail polish only looked good on Taylor Hanson because _anything_ looked good on Taylor Hanson. Caphriel kept a careful eye on the machine monitoring the girl's heartbeat throughout the argument. 

Thirty minutes later, he put on his coat and left the hospital. Three minutes after he left, the nurse found the girl dead, but smiling. 

Caphriel's orders had been that he should talk about her immortal soul and the wonder of God's creation, but he modified his instructions where he thought fit. This was called initiative, and was part of why he did his job so well, besides being only practical when dealing with humans. 

Around 6:30, he had some cold pizza for breakfast and listened to a recitation of _Pippa's Song_ on the BBC. 

Robert Browning, he thought, was one heck of a stupid bastard. Who cared if a snail was living it up on a thorn? Probably not God, although you never could tell what God was thinking at any one time. For all he knew, He could be thinking about snails, unlikely though it seemed. He was ineffable. That was the point. 

Still. Poetry. What a load of crap. 

At 7:00 a.m., Caphriel watched a firefighter save a dog and a child from a burning building, and smiled. 

The photographs were undoubtedly going to look very inspiring. Caphriel certainly hoped so. The dog had been roasted when he found it. It had taken any amount of effort to recreate the fur. It wasn't just a matter of resurrection; he'd had to get the shading and the individual hairs just right. 

He was quite pleased with the result. It would have taken a much keener eye than the average human's to spot what had been the dead parts of the dog. Since this had basically been all of the dog, Caphriel felt he had the right to be pleased. 

At 10:23, he entered a cyber cafe, where he spent the next few hours keeping servers running and systematically exterminating computer viruses. 

He'd yet to find a permanent cure for pop-up ads, but he was working on that. 

Later he stood up, stretched with a satisfying popping sound, and wandered out for a cup of bad coffee. On the way he nudged the conscience of a boy about to shop-lift, and reminded an old man that he only had one child and if he didn't forgive our Brenda for what she done, they'd likely never meet again until he was carried to her in a box. Don't think of it as losing a daughter, Caphriel suggested telephatically, think of it as gaining another one. 

Across the city, he showered some moments of divine ecstasy around a cathedral, although he did this rather half-heartedly. Divine ecstasy just didn't cut it any more. In the old days, divine ecstasy made them leap up and run off to devote their lives to God; now it just made them think they'd taken too much cough syrup that morning, and resolve to take more as soon as possible. 

In the afternoon he helped a man through his physical therapy session, advised a young woman to quit her stultifying job in the bank in favour of a career in the arts, invented a few more genuinely funny jokes, brought a kitten down from a tree, and averted the production of yet another reality TV show. 

In the evening, he went to St. James' Park, where he fed the ducks and thought about being clinically depressed. 

He was pretty sure he was. It was one of those things you just knew, if you were an angel. People think angels know nothing of evil or sorrow. This is as sensible as thinking pest exterminators know nothing about cockroaches. Angels know as much about the darker, more unpleasant aspects of life as the next demon, if not more. It's their _job_. 

Caphriel knew the symptoms of depression. He'd seen it in millions of suicidal humans before. 

He knew why he was depressed, too. 

The truth of the matter was, plain holiness just wasn't enough these days. You couldn't ask humans to be decent to each other as a bargain for eternal life in heaven. They didn't listen. You had to add flashy lights and auras. And mystic names in Sanskrit. And aromatherapeutic herbs. And probably a couple of free action figures wouldn't hurt. 

It was impossible _not_ to get depressed. You worked and you worked and you prayed and you had faith, you really did, and every morning you woke up and the entire world hit you in the face, as full of people doing horrible things to one another as it had been the day before. What was it, if not depressing? 

And Caphriel liked people. Most angels didn't, which was understandable when you considered how, well, bad humans looked in comparison. Hardly any of the angels had ever got over the Eden debacle, but they hadn't spent the last six thousand years on Earth, getting to know humans better. Caphriel had. And he'd found that he couldn't hate humans. They were just so . . . messed up. They spent their short lives wasting their time, going in circles, deliberately blocking out the light while they whinged about the darkness. There was nothing either Heaven or Hell could do to them that was worse than what they did themselves, every single day. Humans were put on this wonderful, beautiful earth, with its millions of intriguing possibilities, for a brief life-span, and they spent those short years staring at their navels and complaining about the view. 

It was impossible not to like them, and want to help them. The bloody depressing thing was that it never seemed to make a difference. 

What was worrying was that Caphriel suspected he was being influenced by them. Slowly but surely, he was changing. He had less than angelic impulses, which wouldn't worry him so much if it weren't for the single-minded nature of the impulses. 

Caphriel sighed and massaged his temples, although he didn't have a headache. The gesture comforted him on a spiritual level. 

Sometimes he just wanted a break. A little time to himself. A rest from humans . . . . 

_Who are you kidding,_ he thought. _You know what you want._

He did, too. That was the worst thing. At least, it _would_ be, if there weren't so many other worse things. 

A burst of pain and a piercing shriek sliced through the grey clouds of his depression. Caphriel jerked upright. A small child of indeterminate sex sat on the grass in front of him. He'd apparently suffered a fall, and was intent on making his suffering known. In Greenland, if possible. 

Caphriel winced. He hadn't had a headache, but he could feel one starting up at the shrill train whistle quality of the child's scream. 

"Are you all right?" said Caphriel, knowing it was a stupid question and not caring. He could hear the strained patience in his own voice. He helped the child up, his efforts considerably hampered by the fact that the child did not want to get up. "Up you get. There. No harm done." This was true. There had been a scrape or two earlier, but they no longer existed. 

"I -- hurt -- my -- LEG!" screamed the child. 

"Your leg isn't hurt," Caphriel said with perfect truth. He patted the child vaguely on what seemed to be its back. "There, there. Stop screaming. Now, where's your mother?" 

"I -- want -- my -- MUMMY!" 

"Then we both agree," said Caphriel testily. "Be calm, child. No-one will hurt -- oh, _God_. Look, take this sweetie and piss off, you evil little bugger, all right?" He shoved a piece of toffee into the child's grubby hands. The child, satisfied with the tribute, stuck it in its mouth and shut up. Caphriel miserably shoved his hands in his pockets and turned to leave. 

"_Hwhat_ have you been doing with our Kevin?" thundered a voice, female and irate. Caphriel hadn't heard a voice like that since Eve had found a worm in her apple. 

The woman who stalked up and swept up her child had 'enraged mother' written all over her. In capital letters. Underlined. 

Caphriel submitted his soul to God. It wasn't as if things could get much worse. 

"Ma'am, I assure you I was not doing _anything_ with your Kevin--" 

" . . . I know your type, swish perverts, think you can get away with hurting innocent children, do you? Think I can't tell what you've been doing, well, I know what men're like who wear long coats, I bet you're barely decent under it, if you think I'll let you prey on helpless children you've got another thought coming . . . ." 

"Ma'am--" 

She slapped him hard. The force of it rocked his head back and knocked off his sunglasses. 

His eyes were grey, and kind, and immeasurably sad, and as clear as the first morning of the world. They were eyes that were about six thousand years older than the rest of him. 

Our Kevin's mother stared. Caphriel stared back at her. 

"I'm sorry," said the woman. "I--" 

"Forget about it," said Caphriel wearily. She did. 

He picked up his sunglasses and put them back on after she left, a blank look on her face. 

He felt a little better with their comforting weight on the bridge of his nose. They were a sort of protection against the world. Sometimes he needed that. 

_A break,_ thought the angel Caphriel. _Something for myself._

Which was not an angelic thought, but Caphriel was beyond such things by now. Getting slapped by strange women can do that to you. 

Not today, thought Caphriel. 

Not tomorrow, either. It was only a month since the last time. He should show a little restraint. 

The day after, then. 

The day after tomorrow, he would see Zirah. 

Caphriel drew a deep breath, and his face was that of a man who saw his only heart's desire.


	4. Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3 

The afternoon of the day Zirah received the Antichrist, two men sat in St. James' Park. 

One of them held a baby. The other tore bread into little pieces with nervous energy, and glared at the ducks. 

"Of course, I knew it was going to happen sooner or later," he was saying. "But I didn't think it would be so _soon_." 

"I thought it was supposed to be unexpected," said the man with the baby. He tickled the baby, who gurgled. "It is nearer than you think, that sort of thing." 

"Well, _yes_, but--" Caphriel rolled the bread crumbs between his fingers, and glanced hesitantly at Zirah. He was dandling the child on his knees, looking perfectly happy. 

Dandling was definitely the word. He even had the fond old retainer expression down. Passers-by threw him affectionate looks, their days brightened by the sight of this nice man playing with his baby. 

Like all things to do with Zirah, Caphriel reflected, the scene was much less pleasant when you knew what lurked under the surface. 

"Armageddon," Caphriel said. "The end of the world. You _do_ know what that means, don't you?" 

"Yes?" Zirah looked up. Caphriel felt the familiar painful jolt of complicated feeling at the bright blankness of those eyes. He looked away and hunched down in his seat. 

"You don't seem very pleased about it," said Zirah. He sounded hurt, although being Zirah, he was trying to be polite about it. "I thought you'd be happy. Isn't it what we've been working for?" 

"Yes, but--" 

Six thousand years working on this Earth, this amazing, wonderful, insane place. Six thousand years, trying to make sense of humanity, and failing, but loving it anyway. And now it was all ending. All that work, all that effort, up in flames, just because Heaven and Hell thought it would be a good idea to have some stupid bloody fight over something that had happened so long ago there hadn't even been time back then. 

Ineffable, Caphriel tried to tell himself, but he could feel an enormous desperate rage rising up in him. 

It was all so _stupid_. They said it was to punish the wicked and reward the good, but that wasn't true, not really. Caphriel knew. His fellow angels were practically raring to go, and it wasn't because they wanted to uphold the righteous and vanquish the evils of the world. It was because they they were restless after staying in Heaven for uncounted years, because they were bored, because they hated the other side with a bottomless, unimaginable hatred; and as for Earth and its inhabitants, they couldn't care less. They wanted to fight because they knew nothing about anything. 

And of course they all said Heaven was going to win, because they were the _good_ side, but that was just propaganda. Why have a war at all if they already knew who was going to win? 

Caphriel tried to imagine the world if Heaven won. Every human dead, because _they_ sure as heck weren't going to care about civilian casualties. All that horrible sterile holiness everywhere. Celestial choruses. Everyone wandering around in a haze of goodness and light. No pets allowed, because angels didn't like any creature who couldn't sit still adoring the Lord for more than five minutes. Nothing human ever again. 

It was terrifying. 

The idea of Hell winning wasn't too appealing, either. Nothing was appealing. 

This surely couldn't have been God's purpose, thought Caphriel. To go to all the trouble of creating this in six of the busiest days ever, and then to destroy it after a miserable six thousand years. Everything wiped out. A clean slate. 

What was the point? 

He asked Zirah this. 

"Must there always be a point?" Zirah said serenely. "Most of my people are just in it for the bloodshed. And the triumph of Satan over the kingdoms of the world, of course, but mostly for the bloodshed." 

"So are mine," said Caphriel. "Michael, now. I just know the bugger's champing at the bit. He's wanted to settle that little business of the possessed sixteen-year-old with Dagon for the past four millenia now." 

"So unpleasant, one feels," said Zirah. "You'd think we could work out a more civilised solution. We're all sensible people, after all." He watched with scientific interest as a duck bobbed up and down in the water, its terrified quacks smothered every time it was submerged. 

"Stop that," said Caphriel. 

"What?" 

"The duck." 

"Oh. Sorry." 

The duck surfaced and took to flight, probably traumatised for life. Caphriel watched it gloomily. 

It was always the same. You'd start off having a perfectly normal conversation with Zirah, everything would be going smoothly, you started wondering why he was a demon anyway, and then he went and did something so horrifically, darkly unpleasant that you stopped wondering why he wasn't in Heaven and started wondering why he was in Hell. You really thought they'd create some whole new level for him to operate from. 

It was his mind, of course. It wasn't so much the way it worked as the way it didn't. 

He glanced at Zirah and the baby. 

"He's not very Satanic, is he?" he said. 

"What's that?" 

"Well, you'd expect--" Caphriel waved a hand vaguely. "Horns. A vestigial tail. A gleam of red in the depths of his pure blue eyes. That sort of thing." He looked critically at the infant. "He's just sort of . . . normal, really." 

"That's a fine way to talk about our Antichrist," said Zirah indignantly. "He's the perfect baby." 

"Yes. That's probably the point." Caphriel fell silent. 

He was having strange thoughts. Thoughts that would probably get him kicked out of Heaven if anyone found out about them, although maybe they wouldn't, because it took a lot to get kicked out of Heaven nowadays. It was nothing like the old days, when the wrong twitch of an eyelid could damn your soul. Things had been getting slack, which was probably by Gabriel and all those wankers back in Heaven were spoiling for a fight. They probably thought it would make things better. 

A war between Heaven and Hell wouldn't make things better. It would just make things _not_. At all. Nothing left but a burning ball of rock. 

"We should stop it," Caphriel said slowly. 

"Hmm?" 

"Armageddon. It shouldn't happen." Caphriel's mind was fizzling. You could only be pushed so far before something broke, and this time that small sharp noise was of Caphriel's patience snapping. "We should stop it." 

Zirah had stopped cooing to the baby. He stared at Caphriel in frank astonishment. 

"Stop the end of the world?" he said. "What for?" 

"Because it's wrong!" Caphriel had gone beyond thinking. He could feel a persistent pressure on the back of his eyeballs. "Because there _is_ a world, and it shouldn't end just because thousands of years ago someone thought it would be a good idea to make something to break it in the end!" 

"The someone who had the idea was God," Zirah pointed out politely, but Caphriel ignored him. 

"Because you've got this world, all right, you've got these people with their prime-time telly and their neuroses and their history and, and their sushi; you've got six thousand bloody years of human _life_, and it's going to be _destroyed_, just like that! For no reason! It's stupid! You can't just do that, you can't make something and then throw it all away, it's like breaking a promi--" 

And then he shut up, because it was hard to keep shouting when Zirah was kissing him. 

Caphriel closed his eyes and leaned into the kiss, the light touch of Zirah's fingers on his cheek. He dug his fingers into Zirah's shoulderblades, hanging on to him with the desperation of a drowning man catching hold of a shark. 

He remembered initiating the first kiss with painful clarity. It had been outside a tavern somewhere warm, with the sun hot on his neck and Zirah's solemn eyes bright in the shade. Both of them drunk and a little sleepy, and for once nothing horrible had been happening, and Caphriel had caught Zirah around the neck and kissed him lightly, chastely, with an immense love for the world and everything in it surging in his chest. 

It was supposed to be pure, a brotherly gesture of affection, but then Zirah tilted his head and opened his mouth and suddenly it was something else entirely, something wet and obscene and utterly exquisite. Something Caphriel had no defence against. 

That was the first kiss, but there were more later. There were nights spent tangled up in each other; awkward, groping, infinitely precious minutes in the darkness; mornings when he woke up with Zirah drinking whatever refined and vaguely poofy beverage he'd decided to patronise for the era. They almost made up for the mornings when he woke up alone in a ravaged bed, guilt and loneliness fighting for the upper hand in his soul. 

Sometimes they stumbled into each other accidentally-on-purpose and did nothing more than share a meal at some marvellous little restaurant nobody else had ever heard of. Sometimes they met on the job and ended up spending days in bed, mapping each other's bodies and exploring the far more dangerous territory of each other's minds. Sometimes in the middle of the night, Zirah wrapped cold, cold fingers around Caphriel's arm and sobbed brokenly against his shoulder, because he'd never meant to fall, the wrong thought in the wrong place at the wrong bloody time, could anyone blame him? Could they? 

Those were the bad times. 

Caphriel had first kissed Zirah because Zirah's madness was an unbearable itch in his mind. He'd thought he could somehow make it better, thought his love could seal the cracks in Zirah's sanity, because his love for Zirah was desperate and overwhelming and it felt like a force greater than himself, and in those first few heady centuries he'd thought he could do anything. 

Then he'd found that no amount of love would ever heal the permanent dislocation of Zirah's mind, but he kept kissing Zirah because . . . because . . . because he did. Because he couldn't seem to stop. Because it was, apparently, something he needed. 

It was still a force greater than himself. 

Zirah pulled away, and Caphriel forced himself to let go of him. The Antichrist was still cradled in Zirah's arms, the infant's blue eyes wide and uncomprehending. 

"Bad day?" said Zirah gently. He smiled slowly. 

"Every day is," said Caphriel. He smiled back. "But this one's getting better." 

He took another kiss, and tried to ignore the fact that the day was also getting worse. Because his relationship with Zirah was about as healthy as a bucket of carcinogen, and he'd promised himself he wouldn't _do_ this anymore. He always promised himself he wouldn't do this anymore. It didn't seem to work. 

But for now there was warmth and sweetness and _God_, Zirah was a fantastic kisser. When he released him Caphriel pressed his forehead against Zirah's and let himself sink into the perfection of the moment, because any minute now . . . . 

"We could kill him," murmured Zirah. 

Yes, right on cue. Caphriel opened his eyes and pulled back. 

"What?" 

"The Antichrist," said Zirah helpfully, holding up the baby, as though it wasn't perfectly obvious whom he was talking about. "We could kill him. That would stop the end of the world." 

"Zirah, he's a _baby_." 

"He's the spawn of Satan." 

"Yes. But. He's a _baby_!" 

"So?" Zirah's expression was faintly puzzled. Caphriel leaned back and stared at the sky and sighed. 

"They'd find out, wouldn't they?" he said. "He'd get sent back to Hell, and then the whole thing would start over again. _And_ you'd be in deep shit." 

_Although,_ Caphriel added mentally, _you probably wouldn't give a damn about that, now would you? You mad bloody bugger._

Caphriel said things like that to himself often. He presented the situation to himself in the most harshly realistic terms possible. He tried his best to get through to himself that not only was Zirah insane and homicidal, he was insane and homicidal and a very bad being to love, and anyway there was no reason to love him, now was there? Even if he _had_ been sane, the affable kindness in his voice real, his love for the quaint and ornate and absolutely useless accompanied by an actual moral sense, his startlingly wry sense of humour not interspersed by inexplicable bouts of violence, really, what was there to love about him? 

Such arguments, Caphriel found, were generally self-defeating. 

"It wouldn't work?" said Zirah. 

"It wouldn't work." 

Zirah settled back and kissed the baby on the forehead absently. He seemed to be thinking. 

"But I don't see why you're so troubled about all this," he said. "You don't even _like_ Earth." 

Caphriel blinked. 

"Yes, I do." 

"No, you don't. It makes you depressed." 

"Well -- all right, yes. But at least I'm _allowed_ to get depressed. I get to have an opinion. You think I'd ever get to have a bad day if Heaven won?" He brushed the bits of bread off his hands. "For that matter, do you think I'd ever get to see the silver lining if Hell won? _I_ don't think so." 

On the one side, Zirah stared at him with the intent, befuddled expression of an archaeologist unearthing Sumerian artifacts in Oklahoma. In front of him, a duck gazed with hurt beady eyes, reproaching the unnecessary waste of bread crumbs. The noises of the city going about its business on this day, this day like any other day, rose up around him. A few yards away, a couple started shouting at each other. _Ain't life wonderful, though?_ Caphriel thought abruptly, and he started laughing. Hard. He threw his arm over his forehead and flopped down on the bench, shaking with laughter. 

The duck scuttled away over the water. The couple stopped yelling to stare at him. The Antichrist gurgled, and Zirah looked at Caphriel with indulgent fondness. 

"You're lunatic," said Zirah. 

Caphriel gulped and pushed up his sunglasses to wipe his eyes. 

"You're a fine one to talk," he said finally, still hiccuping. "_Jesus_." It wasn't an oath. It was a prayer, as heartfelt as any Caphriel had ever made. 

"What are you supposed to do with _him_?" he said, nodding at the baby. 

Zirah told him. 

"Really? Well, that's very clever, isn't it. Well-planned. Every detail taken care of." At the moment, nothing could shake Caphriel's equilibrium. "So you've got until tonight?" 

"Yes," said Zirah. 

It was hopeless. Caphriel's psychopathic true love held the Antichrist in his arms; the Apocalypse was more imminent than it had ever been before, with no remotely feasible way of stopping it; he, an angel, had just scared off one of God's small feathered creatures; and that wasn't even the _half_ of it. It was so fucked up you had to laugh. 

But he was alive, and for the moment the Beast was an innocent blue-eyed baby and Zirah wasn't stalking anyone with an unabridged dictionary and a nasty gleam in his eyes, and the world . . . the world was _amazing_. 

Sometimes he wondered why life was worth living. Sometimes, like now, he knew. 

What the heck. 

"Then you've got a few hours yet," he said. He stood up, feeling dizzy, mostly from the change in altitude, but partly because he'd just had an epiphany. 

_This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it._

"Let's go to mine," said the angel Caphriel. 

Zirah's smile was lazy; secretive and sweet. 

"All right," he said.


	5. Chapter 4

CHAPTER 4 

Zirah woke up in the evening, with the last rays of day slanting in through the windows. 

Caphriel lay on his side, facing away from him. He was curled in on himself in sleep, a pathetically bruised look around his eyes. Zirah touched the angel's bare back with tender fingers. 

It took an effort of will to drag himself out of bed and start putting on the clothes he could find. He managed to recover everything except his left sock, although he did wonder how his trousers had ended up hanging on the lamp. 

The Antichrist was still sleeping peacefully in his fortress of moth-eaten cushions on the couch. He really was the perfect baby. It was a pity they had to grow up and bring about the destruction of the Earth and all its inhabitants, really. 

He looked around the flat. The impression was not cheerful. 

It was technically a different place from Caphriel's last home, but it had certain similarities. Caphriel never managed to stay in one place for long, but the places he moved to always looked exactly alike. They were usually very bare, were run by unpleasant landladies, and were apparently furnished by the unpleasant landladies' blind sons, who all seemed to want to hark back to a simpler and definitely uglier era. For some reason, the wallpaper was always a dreary shade of drabness. 

Oh, there were slight differences, of course, but in spirit this flat was just like the millions of flats, shacks, and occasional cardboard boxes that had come and gone before. A suggestion of mothballs hung in the air. The level of hygiene apparent indicated that the occupant was too busy worrying about the state of humanity to care if cockroaches held regular midnight revels on the floor. 

And not a single book around the place. You really had to wonder why Caphriel even tried to save the world, with such living conditions. 

Of course, he _had_ such living conditions because he was always too busy trying to save the world to do things buy curtains. 

Tsking under his breath, Zirah went to check the contents of the refrigerator. He had a choice between a sad box of frozen pizza, some cold Chinese food, a carton of milk that was growing fur and would shortly be developing an I.Q., and a single fresh apple. 

Penance. That was the only explanation Zirah could think of. Caphriel had to be doing penance for the sins of all mankind, and possibly those of a few extra alien races from other galaxies as well. What was the point of eating, anyway, if it was to digest these excuses for food? 

The problem with Caphriel, Zirah reflected, was that somewhere along the way, he'd started thinking like a human. You could only spend a certain amount of time in a body, moving and eating and living like the creature you were disguised as, before you started thinking like you actually belonged in the body. Caphriel had spent six thousand years in a human body, and he'd always been impressionable. He could never just leave things alone; he'd always wanted to _understand_. And the result of it was that now he subsisted on TV dinners and had living quarters for which 'hovel' would be a compliment, merely to satisfy some strange kink in his soul that insisted that doing all this made things a little better, even though it wasn't clear _how_ it did that. 

He'd gone native. Only humans did stupid things like that. 

If Caphriel had stayed up in Heaven with all those other buggers, Uriel and Raphael and all that crew, he'd probably be much happier now. But then again, he wouldn't be so Caphriel. 

Zirah shrugged and took the apple. 

As he ate it, he wandered quietly around the flat, picking things up and weighing them thoughtfully, peeking into cupboards and corners. In the bed, Caphriel slept the sleep of the innocent, or at least the unused to debauchery. On the couch, the baby lay wrapped in whatever sweet dreams Princes of Lies enjoy. 

What he needed, Zirah thought, was a blunt instrument. 

You could say what you wanted about a knife, its cleanliness and simplicity and, above all, sharpness. You could praise the elegance of the single bullet to the head. You could rhapsodise over the sheer variety of what a technically-minded human could do with bent metal and sticks of wood and fortuituous chemicals. But Zirah had a fondness for the good old blunt instrument. Clubbing a man to death had a spontaneity -- a primal, fundamental honesty -- that merely poisoning him or shooting him lacked. 

And Zirah was old-fashioned. He approved of hard work. Blunt instruments, he felt, showed a genuine effort on the part of the user, a real sincerity of feeling. Any madman could swing a sword or shoot a gun, but it took real _dedication_ to kill with a paperweight. And sufficient upper body strength, of course. 

He opened the wardrobe, not very hopefully. There was the usual chaos of jeans and T-shirts and dusters that had seen better days a decade ago. Sighing, Zirah made to close it again, but a gleam of mahogany amidst the varying shades of dusty black caught his eye. 

He fumbled in the piles of clothes, and drew the thing out. 

It was a walking stick, but it was obviously not made to walk with. It shone. Intricate carvings curled along its length: a tree, a serpent, streamlined human figures, and at the end, a heart-shaped apple. Zirah ran his fingers over it, gazing at it with wonder. It just didn't seem the sort of thing Caphriel would have in his home. Zirah _knew_ the sort of things Caphriel had in his home. He chose them carefully -- they had to be at least ten years old, look like they had inspired the word 'manky,' and, if possible, be Dutch. None of that applied to the walking stick. It was actually _beautiful_. It looked remarkably like what the Garden of Eden might look if it was a walking stick, minus the irate deity. 

It was also heavy. Zirah gripped it, weighing it in his hands, and smiled in a way no human face should have been able to manage. It was an expression from Bosch's worst nightmares. Certainly no other human had ever seen it. 

The Lord provided. 

Six thousand years, a serpent had caused the Fall of Man with an apple. Zirah would have used the entire tree. 

His face relaxed into its usual expression of vague affability. He picked up the Antichrist, cradling him carefully in his arms. Then he glanced at the bed. 

After all, he thought, it couldn't hurt to stop the end of the world. It wasn't such a bad place, all things considered. And it might stop Caphriel from making scenes in the park, although he couldn't be certain of that because Caphriel had a bizarre tendency to get upset over the slightest things, like murder and rape and duck torture. 

Besides, Caphriel had a point. There were no sushi restaurants in Hell. 

Zirah left the flat quietly, his mind made up. He took the stick with him. 

* * *

Caphriel woke up alone in the darkness, guilt a shrill voice in the back of his head. 

Zirah was gone. The Antichrist was conspicuously absent from the couch. 

Caphriel stared at the ceiling. It seemed very far away. 

He considered praying for forgiveness, but thought better of it. He didn't feel up to it. Besides, he'd been spending far too much time on his knees lately. That was the whole problem. 

He examined the cracks in the ceiling, and wondered if he was going to laugh or cry. Both options seemed equally likely, under the circumstances. 

In the end, he did neither. Just curled in on himself and closed his eyes, trying to sink into oblivion. Everything would look better in the morning. Not because everything _would_ be better in the morning, but because the morning wouldn't be now. 

He waited out the night in silence and solitude. 

* * *

Watch closely. 

In a hospital in Tadfield, the course of destiny is being changed, and a nice cup of tea is being made. With lemon. 

In Delivery Room Three, Mrs. Deirdre Young is giving birth to a golden-haired male baby we will call Baby A, for the sake of convenience. 

In Delivery Room Four, the wife of the American Cultural Attache is giving birth to a golden-haired male baby we will call Baby B, though not for long. 

Meanwhile, Zirah is handing the Antichrist over to Sister Mary Loquacious, and carefully planting in her mind the suggestion that the appropriate attire for an American Cultural Attache is a tie, a moustache, and a rather ugly cardigan that went out of fashion before World War II. 

The sight of the man smoking gloomily outside the hospital had inspired Zirah. He'd looked like exactly the sort of man to squash any tendencies towards world domination the minute they surfaced in a young Antichrist. And Zirah had decided that it was time to use that initiative Caphriel was always talking about. 

Zirah had always been good at improvising. 

Now watch them. 

In Delivery Room Three, Sister Mary Loquacious is quietly replacing Baby A with the Antichrist, secure in her belief that the sleeping middle-aged woman in the bed is the wife of the American Cultural Attache. Her certainty is reinforced by the appearance of the man himself, wearing the tie, the moustache, and the cardigan, which is just as ugly as she'd expected. She doesn't remember that she has only expected the cardigan since five minutes ago. 

In the middle of their nice cup of tea, Baby A is wheeled away by another nun, secure in her own belief that she is taking the Antichrist to be exchanged with the son of the American Cultural Attache. 

In Delivery Room Four, Baby A is cunningly switched with Baby B, who is then wheeled out into the corridor and taken into the tender arms of a pleasant-faced man with a camelhair overcoat and a gorgeously carved walking stick. 

Cradling the baby, the stick tucked under an arm, the man strolls down the corridors, out into an empty courtyard full of dustbins and the smell of smoke. It's dark and quiet and they are alone: the baby, the man, and the walking stick. 

You may want to stop watching now. 

After a few exciting minutes, Zirah re-entered the hospital and washed his hands. The walking stick would need more than water, but it was salvageable. His coat, however, was a complete loss. 

Zirah sighed at the brevity of human life, the fragility of mortals, and the unsightly mess blood made of a coat. 

Tomorrow he would call the mortician. He'd seen a quiet little cemetery on the way to the hospital. _It_ would be buried there, close to where its brief life had started and ended. It had to be done properly. 

He thought of the sad little bundle, and sniffled. 

Then Zirah picked up the walking stick, slung his coat over his arm so the stains wouldn't show, and left the hospital. 

In Delivery Room Three, Mrs. Young cooed to the Antichrist. In Delivery Room Four, the Secret Service men gazed warily at the newly named Warlock Dowling. And Sister Mary Loquacious finished her cup of tea. 

Outside, Zirah vanished into the night, suffused in the lovely warm feeling of a bad job well fucked up.


	6. Chapter 5

CHAPTER 5 

So far, Adam Young's eleventh birthday had not been much of a success. 

He'd got given some video games by his parents, and a model plane set by her sister Sarah. Only Wensleydale thought the model plane was cool. Adam had offered it to him, but Wensley had refused with the air of one who did not deserve such earthly delights, and thought his noble sacrifice had better score him some points with Heaven, or else. 

Adam hadn't got what he _really_ wanted. He tried to share his pain with his friends, but Pepper was obstinately unsympathetic. 

"I _tole_ you your parents wouldn't give you a dog," she said. "Huh, catch your parents givin' you a dog. They'd always be complaining about the stuff it eats and the mess and everything. And they'd think it was bad for your health, too. They'd say it was dirty." 

"Your mum says dirt's good for you," Adam said. "She says--" he squinted, as if reading off an invisible script -- "she says, dirt's the nat'ral state of the, the nature of things, and bein' dirty is part of the harmony of the cosmical harmony of the cosmic harmonic universe." Considering the previous sentence, he added, 

"Well, something like that, anyway." 

"Yes, but that's _my_ mum," said Pepper dismissively. "_My_ mum thinks burnin' herbs in your bedroom will bring peace an' tranquility to the troubled soul." 

"Does it?" Brian asked idly. He crackled one of his empty crisp packets. It had been a slow day. Adam's continuing lack of a dog had made him unusually unforthcoming with ideas, and the Them now lounged in the Pit, at loose ends. 

"I dunno," said Pepper. "It just makes _me_ sneeze. But the point is, Adam's mum thinks burnin' herbs in your bedroom is illegal. They've diff'rent views of life." 

This sparked Brian's interest. 

"_Is_ it illegal?" he said. 

"'Course it isn't," said Wensleydale authoritatively. "It's just aromatherapy. It's an alternative method of holistic healin'. My aunt does it all the time; she burns the leaves and there's this smell. She says it rids your soul of the shadows of the mind." 

"_My_ mum says it makes you hallucinate the shadows of the mind," Adam objected. 

"Could be both," said Pepper peacably. "Depends which herbs, really. 'S like meat. You use ham to make hamburgers, and beef to make beefburgers, and chicken to make, to make McChicken burgers. Herbs is like that, only it's diff'rent herbs for burning and seeing things." 

Brian looked vaguely disappointed. 

"Huh. So sage wouldn't work for seeing things, then?" he said. 

"No," said Wensleydale firmly. "If you sniff sage you'll just get leaves stuck up your nose." 

"Mint smells nice, though," Pepper said brightly. "You could try that." 

"Prob'ly just halluc'nate my mother yellin' at me for wasting it," muttered Brian. 

"Anyway, I _am_ getting a dog," Adam inserted abruptly, feeling that his grievance was getting lost in the stream of botanical discussion. "You'll see." 

"No, you won't," said Pepper. "You always say you will, but you never do. And your parents'd never stand for it. They always think you'd get asthma or fever or something from all the dog hair." 

"Maybe you'll get it next year," said Wensleydale, more comfortingly. "I asked my dad for one of those train sets with the trains that really move once, and he said next year, and I got it next Christmas." 

"Yeah, but it was your uncle give it, not your dad," said Pepper. "Who's goin' to give Adam a dog? _He_ hasn't got an uncle." 

"I do too," said Adam defensively. "In South Africa. He grows oranges." 

"Nah, that's apples," said Brian. "They grow apples in South Africa. I heard it somewhere." 

"That's apartheid, _actually_," said Wensleydale. "_And_ it's already over, anyway. Nelson Mandela got rid of it, and they put him in jail, and then he got out and the Spice Girls stole his toilet paper." 

"What sort of fruit is that, then?" 

"Your uncle wouldn't give you a dog," Pepper persisted, undeterred. "He's _old_. He's just like your grandparents." 

"I'm goin' to get a dog," Adam said stubbornly. 

Pepper put on an expression she probably thought was calm and forbearing. 

"Who from?" she said. "I _said_. You haven't got anybody to give you stuff." 

"There's Mr. Rah," said Adam, goaded beyond endurance. 

There was a pause. 

The Them all knew Mr. Rah. He was more Adam's friend, really, but he conscientiously brought presents for all four of them on his yearly visits. And, well . . . . 

"Mr. Pickersgill doesn't like Mr. Rah," Brian said. "I heard him one day, when Mr. Rah was coming down the road. He said it was a disgrace, lettin' people like that walk around." 

The Them glanced at one another uneasily. 

The Them's inclination was to like people whom the local adults disliked. They reasoned that anyone who could earn the dislike of Mr. Pickersgill, a man more wooden and entrenched in mire than any stick-in-the-mud in existence, had to have _some_ good qualities. And Mr. Rah gave them things. Even if the things he gave weren't much good, they were still presents, and there was always the hope that a Toys 'R' Us might catch his eye one day when he'd run out of books to bring them. 

They didn't dislike him. He was nice. He never yelled or lectured; he had no tiresome opinions on the advisability of behaving oneself and keeping one's jeans untorn. He was strange and old-fashioned, and he moved in a perpetual odour of book dust, but he was no weirder than most adults. On the surface. 

It was the something lurking _underneath_ the surface that worried the Them. There was definitely something there. You couldn't have eyes like Mr. Rah's and _not_ have something lurking underneath the surface. It wasn't that there was anger or hatred or suppressed violence in their blue depths. That was the point. There wasn't _anything_ in Mr. Rah's eyes. 

It was _creepy_. 

But the Them were all human, especially Adam. They had the human ability to not see anything they didn't want to see. And Mr. Rah brought presents. 

Still, there was always that feeling of unease, a skulking nightmare they could see just out of the corner of their eyes. 

"He's never done anythin' wrong," said Adam. He shifted on his milk crate. "He's not a murderer or anythin'. Don't see why he can't walk around if he wants to." 

"Yes," said Wensleydale. The Them were watching each other intently. They chose their words carefully, with the sensation of edging around a very deep abyss. "And, and I'm sure he's gettin' therapy. I mean, he would, if there was anythin' wrong with him, I mean. Only there isn't." 

"Yeah, there isn't," said Pepper. "Huh, I r-reckon it's not _possible_ for there to be anythin' wrong with him. He isn't _excitin'_ enough to have anythin' wrong with him. All he ever does he sell books." 

"Yeah," said Adam. The Them relaxed, the tension dissipating. 

"I don't reckon Picky was talkin' about that, 'zactly," said Brian thoughtfully. "I asked my brother about it, and he said it was 'cos Mr. Rah's a faggot." 

There was a longer silence. 

"What -- like a cigarette?" said Pepper eventually. 

"No, that's fags," said Wensleydale. "A faggot's a piece of wood that you burn." 

"Mr. Rah's not a piece of wood," said Pepper reasonably. "Stands to reason he can't be a piece of wood. And I bet he'd be jolly angry if anyone tried to burn him. Well -- _really annoyed_, anyway." 

"_I_ don't know anythin' about it," said Brian doggedly. "That's just what my brother said." 

"And I reckon your brother knows everythin' about Mr. Rah, does he?" said Pepper witheringly. "Huh, 's obvious your brother's never even _seen_ Mr. Rah. If he ever saw Mr. Rah, he'd know straight off he wasn't a piece of wood. If he was a piece of wood, he wouldn't be able to talk then, would he?" 

"I dint _say_ he was a piece of wood, I _said_--" 

"I don't think he'd give Adam a dog, anyway," Wensleydale said hastily, in the face of what appeared to be working up to a serious argument. "You know Mr. Rah's never given us anythin' but books." 

Brian subsided. He sniffed. 

"Yeah, an' they're not even _real_ books, I bet," he said. Mr. Rah's gifts were a grievance of his. "Bet he jus' makes 'em up." 

"What was the one he gave you?" said Pepper. "_Zen And The Art Of Sometimes, Perhaps, If It's At All Possible, Washing Your Face_, wasn't it?" 

"See? I bet he had a talk with my mum before giving me that one." 

"His presents are jolly interesting," Wensleydale disagreed. "Adam's last birthday he gave me a book all about the importance of nutrition and the way the human digestive system works. It had coloured pictures and everythin'." 

"And I got the one about the SAS," said Pepper, brightening at the memory. "With the fighter planes and the military strategies and the spec'fications. That was _wicked_." She paused, and added, 

"'Cept for the part at the end with the moral, goin' on about how war is evil and you should try to avoid causing the end of the world as hard as you can." 

"I usually skip that part," Wensleydale agreed. "But the rest is brilliant." 

"But he wouldn't give Adam a dog," said Pepper. "A book about dogs, maybe, but not a real dog." 

"Well, maybe he'll give something different this year," Adam said hopefully. His optimism was half-hearted, though. It wasn't likely at all that Mr. Rah would bring him a dog. He didn't seem like the sort of man who had ever done more with animals than pat them on the head with vague kindness and then back off quickly. 

"Huh, bet he wouldn't even give Adam a book about dogs," said Brian. "Adam never gets anything int'resting. He only ever gets _poetry_." 

"The one by Yeats was pretty good, actually," said Wensleydale. 

"_I_ didn't like it," said Adam flatly. "It was boring. All those falcons and beasts goin' to Bethlehem. Who cares about beasts goin' to Bethlehem?" 

"_Paradise Lost_ was good, too," Wensleydale went on thoughtfully. 

"_I_ liked _The End Of The World For Dummies_," Pepper said. 

"_I_ don't like any of 'em," said Brian. "An' I don't see why Mr. Rah should start givin' you a dog this year. He never has before." 

"Well, maybe not from him, then," said Adam. "But I _am_ goin' to get a dog." 

(And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouched towards Lower Tadfield that muggy afternoon?) 

"Oh, right?" said Pepper sarcastically. "What sort of dog will it be, then?" 

Adam told her, while around them a fight broke out over a difference of opinion on Milton's _Paradise Lost_. The difference being, Wensleydale thought it was a great albeit flawed work, and Brian thought his knuckles on Wensleydale's scalp might possibly get him to stop goin' on forever about Milton. 

In the distance, a dog growled like a buzzsaw. It was the sound of the end of an era. 

* * *

Caphriel had never actually held a fiery sword. 

He wasn't an important angel. Of course, all angels were important, in the same way that all falling sparrows and all random dust mites were important in the eyes of the Lord, but there were different degrees of importance. Some angels got the flaming swords of righteousness, while others had to be satisfied with the inflammable staves of virtue. In terms of importance, Caphriel had only ever rated the theoretically combustible broom of hardly ever breaking the rules. 

Even knowing this did not make actually picking up a broom easier, Caphriel thought. 

It wasn't that he was a slob. He just never bothered with cleaning up. He spent very little time in his flat anyway, except to sleep and occasionally make another use of the bed, so it made little difference. The vermin never gave him any trouble. It was cheating, of course, but he had a pact with the cockroaches of the building. They didn't show up when he chose in his angelic wisdom to have a guest over, and he stepped over their unholy revels when he wanted a glass of water in the middle of the night. 

Now, though, it looked like their arrangement would have to end. Caphriel swiped a broom at a dusty corner with unnecessary violence. 

More than eleven years he'd stayed here. He'd have had to move sooner or later, he knew; Caphriel never felt comfortable staying in one place for more than twenty years, although he made sure his landlords never noticed their unaging tenant. But it unsettled him to be forced to move so soon. Caphriel had grown to be a creature of habit. Zirah thought of him as a sort of rolling stone, but that was because Zirah had basically stayed in the same place for the last five hundred years. Time didn't have the same meaning for Zirah as it had for everyone else. 

Come to think of it, nothing had the same meaning for Zirah as it had for everyone else. 

Caphriel looked around his flat, and sighed. 

But there was nothing for it. The landlady's daughter had returned after ten years abroad, and she had all sorts of _ideas_ to make the lodgings more profitable. The idea that furniture came in brighter colours than brown and grey, for instance. And that the lodgers should be able to open their windows without using a crowbar. Caphriel didn't _want_ to be able to open his windows. He hadn't come so far only to start trusting the London air. 

And he just _knew_ she'd called in an exterminator when he was out. He thought he hadn't seen some of the cockroaches for a while, and the ones that were left had a distinctly reproachful expression when they scuttled across the floor. 

It was definitely time to move when he couldn't look his vermin in the face anymore. 

And because he was an angel, and angels had certain moral obligations, he was cleaning up the flat before he left. Then, Caphriel thought sourly, please-call-me-Aimee could paint the flat in lemon yellow to stimulate the imagination all she liked. Where he was going, it wouldn't matter. 

He shoved the swishy end of the broom at the floor again. It didn't seem to make any difference to the dirt. Caphriel grit his teeth and did _not_ swear. 

Oh, to hell with standards. The flat was clean, if it knew what was good for it. 

It did. 

Now to pack. 

He shouldered open his wardrobe and gingerly poked around in the masses of clothes. Really, it was amazing the way clothes piled up. He didn't remember buying them, although he must have at some point, because Heaven did not hold with creating black trenchcoats from the raw firmament. He didn't even remember putting them into the wardrobe. He hadn't done more than stick a hand in and grab the first piece of clothing he touched for -- well, decades. 

He took a deep breath, and started digging. 

He wouldn't take much with him, of course. He didn't need that many clothes, however oversupplied his wardrobe appeared to be in that department. A few pairs of trousers, T-shirts, a coat or two, and he'd be set for the next decade. As for the rest -- well, it looked like the Salvation Army was going to find it had more faded black clothes than it knew what to do with. 

Caphriel blinked when his hand touched something hard and smooth. Not a button, unless it was really _big_ . . . . He curled his fingers around the object and drew it out. 

Oh. The walking stick. He'd forgotten all about it. Caphriel smiled in simple, uncomplicated pleasure at the gleam of light on the wood. 

When had he got the stick, anyway? In the fourteenth century, hadn't it been -- he'd been given it by a carpenter he'd helped in a small matter involving a priest, three goats, and a rosebush. It had been a highlight of an otherwise unremarkable and -- if Caphriel was honest with himself -- extremely boring century. The stick should have fallen to pieces years ago, of course, but Caphriel had liked it. It had been given to him in an act of kindness, and, well, it was beautiful. He'd kept it carefully; it was shinier than it had been the day he'd got it, in fact. . . . 

There was a discoloration on the stick. A stain. Caphriel frowned, puzzled. What on earth -- oh, _Christ_. 

Blood. It was blood. There was _blood_ on his walking stick, and how the hell had it got there, had his dusters started bleeding or something because surely no-one could have got their hands on it; Caphriel himself hadn't touched the stick in a . . . . 

Enlightenment struck a direct blow on the back of his head. 

He'd just bet the stick had struck a direct blow on the back of someone else's head, too. 

"The _bastard_!" 

* * *

Zirah was meticulously rearranging his books for the billionth time when an avenging angel burst into his shop. 

"Ah, I think you're looking for Intimate Books next door," Zirah began automatically, before he saw who it was. He beamed in delight. 

"Why, Caphriel, what a pleasant--" 

"What did you do with it?" said Caphriel. He was even more dishevelled than usual. There was an odd glint in his eye, a glint Zirah hadn't seen since the Sudanese war (which had been unfair, because Zirah had had _nothing_ to do with that one). 

"Do with what?" said Zirah, honestly puzzled. 

"Don't try to lie to me!" yelled Caphriel. Zirah jumped. "I _know_ you did it! No-one else could have! What the hell did you do with it? Why _it_? You couldn't have just used a rock or a, a cosh or something?" 

"Caphriel, I don't know what you're talking about," said Zirah patiently. "Perhaps if you just calmed down and explained--" 

Caphriel wasn't listening. 

"I mean, _why_? I know you have a job to do, and yes, sometimes it has to involve blood, but with _this_? Was it impossible to use a, a blackjack, or something more suited to the purpose? Because I understand that you don't mingle much with humans, but it's really just _basic_ manners to not use your -- your -- your acquaintances' personal possessions to commit murder!" 

Caphriel waved his hands wildly, disturbing the dust. He held a staff in one of his hands -- no, not a staff. Zirah's eyes lit in recognition. 

"Oh, you're talking about the _stick_," he said. He reached out and plucked it out of Caphriel's hand easily. Holding the stick up to the light, he studied it. "Ah, yes, I see what you're talking about. How careless of me." 

"Careless?" Caphriel stared at Zirah in disbelief. "What, you tripped over a pebble and accidentally brought the stick down on someone's head?" 

"No, I was talking about how I put it back without cleaning it," said Zirah serenely. "It was very inconsiderate of me; you're quite right to be upset." He looked sadly at the stick for a moment, then he brightened. "But don't you worry, I'll have it fixed in two shakes. A little elbow grease and, ahem, careful thought should clean the stain, no problem. . . ." 

"I'm not _talking_ about the stain!" said Caphriel. "I don't give a damn about the stain! I want to know how the hell it got there in the first place!" 

Zirah looked hurt. 

"There's no need to shout," he said. "I'm sure I don't know why you're so angry about this. It was _your_ idea." 

Caphriel looked at Zirah. He rolled the stick in his hands, looking at Caphriel with the honest, hurt bewilderment of a man who had just had his bouquet of roses thrown in his face. The avenging spirit that had led Caphriel in a white heat from his flat to the shop left him in a sudden rush to avoid the emotional traffic there would be later. He slumped down. 

"Zirah," he said wearily, "what did you do?" 

Zirah was peering at him warily, as if worried he might explode at any moment. 

"I don't want the Apocalypse any more than you do, you know," Zirah said diffidently. This produced no explosions. 

"It was really _necessary_," he went on, more confidently. "We couldn't have him running around, now could we?" 

Caphriel could feel a horrible realisation hanging over him, a feeling like the pressure of a coming avalanche. Trying to avoid it was futile, but he tried anyway. He could have a few more blessed, beautiful seconds in which he would not know what it was that Zirah had actually done. He would never have this time again. 

"I -- I'm not sure who you're talking about, Zirah," he said weakly. 

Zirah blinked. 

"Well, no, you wouldn't, would you," he said. "You've never met him. Had," he corrected himself. "Had never met him. Not that it would have made much of a difference, really; they're not very developed at that age. I found it quite difficult to tell them apart, to tell you the truth." 

Caphriel put his head in his hands, trying to dodge the inevitable enlightenment. 

"Quite difficult?" he said slowly. His words seem to come from very far away. "So how did you tell which one to murder?" He looked up as a thought struck him. "It _was_ murder, wasn't it? Not just a concussion, or a couple of broken bones?" The expression on Zirah's face killed his hope a-borning, and he slumped back down. 

"And after all, it's all in the past now," said Zirah obliviously, continuing whatever conversation he imagined it to be in his head. "It's been eleven years. Let bygones be bygones, is what I always say." He paused. "Actually, didn't you ever find the stick before this? You should have mentioned it earlier. I would have been glad to clean it. . . . Caphriel, are you all right?" 

Caphriel was staring off into space with the glassy gaze of the irrevocably damned. The realisation had hit, and stunned several of his higher brain functions in the process. 

"Caphriel?" 

"Oh, my God," the angel said. "Eleven years ago. My God." He fixed an unseeing look of horror on a brownish stain on the far wall, then whirled around to face Zirah. 

"Don't tell me you killed the _Antichrist_!" 

"Of course I didn't," said Zirah. "Was that all you were worried about? No, I didn't hurt the Antichrist, bless his Armageddon-bringing little heart." 

"Ah." Caphriel exhaled in relief. 

"It was a pity about the other one, of course, but we must all make sacrifices," Zirah went on. "We couldn't have him alive; we'd have an extra ten-year-old. Somebody might have noticed him, and then where would we be?" 

The frozen look returned to Caphriel's face as he vainly tried to escape enlightenment. 

"With a clean walking stick?" he said. "Ahaha. Zirah, I, I'm not entirely sure I understand what you're saying. . . ." 

Zirah wasn't listening. A calendar on the counter had caught his eye. His face dissolved into dismay. 

"Not an extra ten-year-old," he muttered. "An extra _eleven_-year-old. Oh dear, oh dear. How could I have forgotten?" He went behind the counter and started scrabbling vaguely amidst the stacks of books. "And they'll all be waiting for their presents. I really should have written it down somewhere. . . ." 

He unearthed an ancient tome, putting it down on the counter. He straightened up and glanced at his watch, and sighed. 

"It's too late to go now," he said. "By the time I get there it'll have been past their bedtime. And I still haven't got that book for Wensleydale. I must hunt up that dealer; it's been a week since I ordered it. . . ." 

He swept past Caphriel and started putting on his coat. Caphriel stared at his back in confusion. 

"Where the hell are you going?" he said. 

Zirah looked up distractedly. He seemed to have completely forgotten Caphriel. 

"Ah, yes," he said. "I'm terribly sorry to leave you like this, Caphriel, but I have very urgent business. You do understand, don't you? It was nice talking to you; perhaps we could have dinner some other day. . . ." 

"I don't _want_ dinner some other day, I want _answers_ -- Zirah! _Zirah_! God da -- for fu -- for pity's sake, Zirah!" 

Zirah was gone.


	7. Chapter 6

CHAPTER 6 

Thursday dawned bright and beautiful. 

The morning light crept across a small cemetery in Tadfield, gilding the tombstones with soft gold. It poured over the grass like clear syrup, illuminating the figure of a man who stood by one of the grey stones. A bag that bulged oddly lay on the grass beside his feet. His head was bowed, his hands folded primly. His lips moved in what looked like silent prayer. 

Then Zirah lifted his head and brushed the tombstone lightly with a hand. His attitude was still one of reverent pensiveness. 

Zirah was a creature of ritual. He believed in doing the proper thing. He believed in decorum. You had to show respect, you had to do the right thing, because if you didn't, what were you? You were nothing. You deserved nothing, because you can't ever get something for nothing. You can't just run through life, not thinking of anyone or anything, trusting blindly that everything turn out all right, because it won't, will it? 

It hadn't. Zirah knew all about it. 

But if you worked. If you tried, if you tried _hard_ and did all the right things and never, ever said what you weren't supposed to, maybe somebody would notice. Maybe somebody would help, would . . . 

(forgive) 

. . . see. It _could_ turn out all right. He could make a happy ending. But he had to work at it. 

You don't ever get something for nothing. 

And so Zirah did this every year, this almost-sacred pilgrimage. Maybe another -- person might not have bothered, but Zirah did. It wasn't just for the small bundle buried so many years ago, it was for all of them, all the blank eyes and silenced voices that followed him. Zirah cared, he cared about every single one of them. He'd never forgotten. 

He dug a foot in the earth. He tried to ignore the ghostly sensation of a gumless mouth gnawing vainly at his shoe. 

It wasn't _pleasant_. The look on Caphriel's face yesterday -- he didn't think Zirah _enjoyed_ himself, did he? Travelling all the way to the back of beyond, when he could be in his bookshop right now, sorting the new shipment of religious books. Zirah was making an effort. But Caphriel didn't _understand_ about doing the right thing. When Zirah had tried to explain, Caphriel had looked at him oddly and said there was never a right thing to do, just the only thing. There were never any choices. 

Sometimes Zirah felt the rift between his and Caphriel's minds was almost too great to cross. It was a great comfort that they could relate in . . . different ways. 

He smiled, lowered his eyes and was determinedly contemplative for the next five minutes. Silence expanded in the cemetery, accented by the susurration of leaves in the wind. 

Finally he dabbed at his eyes with a rather crumpled handkerchief and bent to pick up his bag, taking care not to jostle the books inside it. He turned and felt the pressure of the blunt snout of a gun against his ribs. 

"Dunt move," said Hastur. He dug the gun into Zirah's side. Hastur might have been somewhat out-of-date when it came to understanding mobile phones or electricity, but violence was a timeless language every demon could speak. 

Zirah looked up slowly. He wore a sorrowful smile that, if anything, grew even more sweetly sad when it collided with Hastur's rictus of mingled savagery and terror. 

"Dunt say it," spat Hastur, "dunt say you weren't expectin' me, or I gave you a shock, or what a pleasure it is to see me." 

Zirah shut his mouth. He coughed in embarrassment. 

"I wasn't going to say that," he said mildly. "I was just going to ask--" 

"And dunt ask any questions, and dunt say my name," said Hastur. He paused. A bead of sweat rolled down his temple. Zirah watched it with detached concern. 

"_I'm_ asking the questions now," Hastur continued. For a demon who was holding the gun, he seemed remarkably unsure of himself. His viciousness had an odd tinge of nervousness. He had the air of an actor who was valiantly going on with the script despite knowing that something was seriously wrong with the set. Zirah disregarded him. 

"Is Ligur here?" he said cheerfully, as if being accosted by his colleague with a gun was a perfectly normal occurrence. "Oh, there he is, behind that bush. Come along out, Ligur." The short figure lurking in the shrubbery did not move. "My dear chap, I'm not going to eat you." 

"Says you," said Ligur sullenly. "_I_ dint ask for the job. Not me. 'M not an exacting demon. Just give me a soul or two to torture and I'm happy. _I'm_ not lookin' for glory--" 

"Shutupshutupshutup!" Hastur gripped the gun. Zirah made a pained face, but politely refrained from saying anything. His courteous silence resounded throughout the cemetery; it seemed to increase Hastur's jumpiness. 

"How's your. How's your business been, then?" said Hastur, with an attempt at a nasty leer. It crept across his face, met Zirah's look of grave friendliness, and crumbled. He went on, with a courage born of desperation. "Been very busy, have you?" 

"Why do you ask?" said Zirah. His expression of guilelessness was such that a six-year-old couldn't imitate it. 

Hastur dug up some moldy scraps of courage from somewhere. 

"Himself was hanging around, Down There," he said, with the exaggerated nonchalance of a movie gangster, "and He was thinking, why, we haven't heard much of our Zirah lately, have we? No progress reports, no information about His son. He missed the plangent tones of your voice." 

Hastur's face contorted in a leer. The venomous malice fought with the lingering traces of terror, and won. For the moment. 

"So Ligur and me went to look up the boy on his birthday," he continued. "See that the hell hound got off safely and that. And what did we find? What do you think, Zirah?" 

He managed to make Zirah's name sound like something pond scum would spit out. 

"I really can't imagine," said Zirah politely. He didn't seem to realise he was being held up with a gun. More than anything else, he looked like he was thinking of a bibliophile's convention he was missing, and regretting that courtesy forbid him from detaching himself from Hastur's grasp. 

"We found a _gerbil_," Hastur ground out. He seemed to have forgotten his fear. Behind him, the bushes shook urgently. "A fucking _gerbil_." 

"Gerbils are very suitable pets for children," Zirah said mildly. 

"And some plastic toys," said Hastur, ignoring him. "And a couple of clowns performing parlour tricks. No hell hound, Zirah. Could you tell me why there wasn't no hell hound, Zirah?" 

Zirah was silent. The shrubbery that contained Ligur rustled nervously. 

"And we find you here, hanging around a cemetery with a bag of fucking _books_," said Hastur, breathing heavily. "Miles away from the kid you told us was the Antichrist. You think you could tell us why, Zirah?" 

"The books?" said Zirah. "Books are important, you know. A proper education, that's what children need. Especially in these stirring times. Know your enemy--" 

"I wasn't talking about the books!" shouted Hastur. Zirah shut up. "What the Hell is going on?" 

Silence. 

"You know what I think, Zirah? You want to know what I think?" said Hastur. "I think there was a fuck up somewhere, Zirah. And I think the fault was yours. You want to know what happened to those clowns?" He shoved his face into Zirah's, breathing on it. "Let me tell you, what's gonna happen to you is gonna be even worse." 

His voice dropped to a whisper, thick with menace and the memory of anguish. Other people's. 

"Your fate will be whispered by mothers in dark places to frighten their young," he said. 

Zirah smiled, a blinding smile, full of amusement and humour and sheer human friendliness. It was an enchanting smile, to the unsuspecting. Its effect on the demons was that Hastur stepped back precipitously, and a dark figure emerged from the bushes behind him, creeping determinedly to the other end of the cemetery. 

"I expect it already is," said Zirah thoughtfully, and reached out. Exquisitely manicured fingers closed around the gun in Hastur's nerveless grip. 

"I'll give you ten seconds," said Zirah. His eyes were lit with bright, childlike delight. He leaned towards Hastur, who was rapidly backing away from the enthrallment on Zirah's face. Ligur had forgotten about stealth and was fleeing, crashing through bushes and tripping over tombstones. 

"Run," Zirah whispered. Someone yelled behind him. None of them noticed. 

The figures of the two demons blurred and vanished. 

The problem with this Earth, Zirah thought, was that nobody ever let him _relax_. 

He followed them. 

* * *

"Hey! What do you think you're--" 

But then there were none. 

"--doing." 

Anathema Device slid down the fence she'd been climbing and crumpled in the bushes, her mouth open. 

She'd been planning to stalk right into what looked like a very sticky situation and solve it with her usual method, which consisted mainly of being briskly practical and not allowing anyone a second to think. She was confident enough about them that she was sure she could have managed to defuse the situation, even if it involved a man with a gun. And if she couldn't, well, there was always her bread knife and her feet. Anathema wasn't a witch for nothing. Her shoes were made for running, on the rare occasions when sheer strong-mindedness didn't work. 

But there was no-one to push around. There had been three men. Now there wasn't. 

The breeze ruffled the grass where the men had stood. 

If it had been anyone else, they would have thought they were seeing things. But in Anathema's line of work, she saw things everyday. Her job was to figure out what they meant, and she had the best guidebook in the world. 

Agnes would have something to say about this. It was probably, Anathema thought, the one Justinius Device had interpreted as referring to the Grand National, on the basis of which he had ruined the Devices for the next couple of centuries. 

She picked herself up, dusted herself off, and climbed back over the fence where Phaeton was waiting, one wheel spinning crazily. 

The end of the world, she thought. It had to be a sign. Before you knew it, they'd be up to their chins in frogs. 

Frowning in thought, she righted her bicycle. It was probably terribly scratched, the way she'd knocked it over in her haste to get to the strange men before anything -- well, anything happened. It might not make much of a difference, considering what Phaeton had been through before, but then again, she might have to make some repairs ... 

"Are you all right?" 

Slowly, inexorably, Anathema's eyes were dragged up to a friendly young face peering over the fence. It was a face worth looking at. It looked like Just William as illustrated by Botticelli. 

"Yes," she said, staring. 

There was something odd about the boy. Very -- 

"I thought you might of fell off your bike," he said. "I was goin' to see if I could help. Dog led me here." He gestured at a small mongrel that looked like it had just stepped out of an Enid Blyton book. Definitely something odd. Something important about him. But Anathema just couldn't think . . . 

"Thank you. It's a very nice dog," she said absently. The boy beamed. "What's your name?" 

"Adam Young," said Adam. Generously, he added, "It's a nice bike, too." 

"Oh, this old thing? It's just--" Anathema looked down. 

"It _is_ nice," she said, surprised. Then she wondered why she was surprised. 

But surely Phaeton hadn't always been this . . . shiny? And the gears. She felt almost certain there hadn't been sixteen different kinds of fancy gears the last time she had looked. Phaeton had been in the family for years; it couldn't have always been so modern. It looked exactly like the kind of bike a boy like Adam would think was cool. Where had the basket gone? . . . 

What basket? 

Anathema shook her head. She could feel a headache coming on. And there was still the matter of disappearing gun-toting men. She should look it up in the Book. 

"D'you want me to help you back to your cottage?" Adam said, not to be done out of being helpful. "I haven't got anything to do at the moment." 

Anathema peered suspiciously at Adam. If she knew anything about places like Tadfield, Adam had probably been sent by his mother to snoop around. But after all, she thought, what harm could it do? It would give the residents something to talk about. And it wasn't like any of it would matter in a couple of days. 

Besides, she liked Adam. There was something eminently likeable about him. He had an honest face. 

"Why not?" said Anathema. She let Adam twiddle happily with the gears on her oddly unfamiliar bike. His dog trotted at his ankles, making running attacks at random weeds. Anathema had the impression that it should be a lot bigger, but she couldn't imagine why. 

"So . . . where do you come from?" 

* * *

Anger was an inexorable pressure behind Caphriel's eyes. 

It obliterated all thought, dragged him down streets and pushed him in its own direction. He gave himself up to it, gripping his walking stick so hard its carvings embedded themselves on the flesh of his palm. 

"The bastard," he muttered. "The _bastard_." He let his feet lead him. They knew where he was going better than his head. 

He'd loved Zirah for longer than most civilisations endured. He'd done it in spite of the rules, of all sense, of his own judgement. He'd done it because, because, because there was something there, there had to be something there, something wonderful and beautiful that blazed. Something unlike anything else in God's unbelievable, maddening world. Something that was broken, and had been for a long time. 

He'd _known_ better than to trust Zirah. Zirah walked to the beat of a drummer who was short a whole drumkit. Zirah went strange places in his head. Zirah killed people as easily as he smiled, and the worst thing was that he never realised it was wrong . . . . 

Caphriel should have known. 

He hadn't. 

It took him several minutes to realise that he had stopped and was staring at himself in a shop window. He realised with a shock that he looked absolutely tragic, like a rock star who had been passed a celery stalk instead of the expected joint. He was trying unsuccessfully to wipe the look of his face when his perception rearranged itself subtly. His reflection faded into the background, and Caphriel found himself looking at the word "CLOSED," written in Zirah's careful copperplate handwriting. 

Of course. 

If Caphriel had had a flaming sword, he'd have stuck it right in the door and sliced the bugger in half. As it was, he thumped it with his stick, until a 999 look in the eyes of certain passers-by gave him the impetus to will it open. 

He stepped in, shutting the door gently behind him. Then, calmly, methodically, he ransacked the place. 

His hands didn't shake at all. 

* * *

When Newt Pulsifer joined the Witchfinders' Army as the first recruit in years, he rapidly passed through several emotional stages. 

These were: incredulity, horror, disgust, fascination, wonder, boredom, boredom, boredom, a brief flare of interest, and a desperate desire to be anywhere but where he was, right _now_. 

These all, except the last two stages, occurred in Sergeant Shadwell's flat, when he was scouring the newspapers for strange phenomena and surplus nipples. The second last stage started when the door to the WA's headquarters burst open, and a man in dusty black stalked into the room. 

"I want to speak with the General," he said shortly. He didn't say, "_Now._" He didn't need to. 

Newt had heard of love at first sight. He didn't believe in it, in the shaky, half-hopeful way he didn't believe in God, peace conferences and signed petitions. But now he could well believe there was such a thing as hate at first sight, because he was feeling it with a vengeance. 

Caphriel wore his human form in the absent-minded way he wore his threadbare black coats, but over the years it had grown up around him and moulded itself to his personality. It wasn't that it was good-looking, although it was. It wasn't its grace or its romantic gauntness. It was the style it exuded. It had "poetically angsty rocker" written all over it in messy handwriting. It was incredibly, indifferently, casually _cool_. 

And the worst thing was, Newt thought as he tried to explain to the man that the Witchfinder General wasn't around just that minute, the _worst_ thing was that the man didn't care. He seemed quite nice, actually, an ordinary, harried man who for some reason was furious at the entire world at the moment. He was insistent about talking to someone in charge, but he wasn't particularly arrogant or rude; he just seemed too distracted to care if he came off as pushy. Newt could tell the man probably didn't even wear his sunglasses for effect -- he had some kind of eye condition, maybe, or he had just forgotten to take the glasses off when he came in. He probably wore black because he didn't have to wash it often. 

It didn't matter. Caphriel was _still_ cool. His indifference only increased his cool quotient. 

Newt had never been cool. 

He hated Caphriel immediately, with an unreasoning, unswerving and absolute loathing. 

"Oh, for _God's_ sake," Caphriel was saying passionately when Shadwell entered, holding a paper bag bulging with tins of condensed milk. 

Shadwell glared at Caphriel. Caphriel forgot all about Newt and returned the glare, with interest. He wasn't in a mood to be nice, especially after several minutes of trying to explain to the imbecilic private that he didn't care if the General wasn't in; he'd speak to anyone with authority. 

"Sergeant," he said, "I want you to find someone for me." 

Shadwell took one look at Caphriel, and swallowed an oncoming grumble. 

"Fine," he said, with a fairly decent attempt at deference. "We'll put our best on the job right awa', sor. We'll find 'un in no time, I'm sure. Noo, if ye'll just tak' a . . ." 

"I'll make certain of that," said Caphriel calmly. "I'll be coming with you." 

"_What?_" 

Caphriel's face looked like it had been carved out of marble by an artist in a very bad temper. It was immovable. 

"I won't get in the way of your agents," he said. "I just want to make sure the job gets done. I'm sure you understand." 

He smiled, and Newt quickly revised his opinion of the man. 

Nice? Not in a million years. He was an utter _bastard_. 

And that was how Newt found himself sputtering down the road in his car on a clear Friday morning, with a man like a painting entitled _Misery in Monochrome_ hunched in the passenger seat beside him. 

Newt wasn't wholly enjoying himself -- Caphriel's grimaces whenever the Wasabi exhibited one of its endearing little quirks didn't make him any more likeable than he'd been the day before -- but he was experiencing an odd sensation of freedom. After spending several weeks in a sticky flat, separating bizarre phenomena from the newspapers with a pair of scissors, this new assignment made a noteworthy diversion. Newt was going Somewhere, even if it was just in pursuit of the client's so-called "friend" in a small town on the edge of nowhere. It was better than newspaper-clipping. 

This was the brief flare of interest. It didn't really make up for the next stage, but at least Newt had enjoyed himself a little before everything went to pieces. 

Of course, Newt never did see it that way.


	8. Chapter 7

CHAPTER 7 

This was a bad place to die. 

Of course, thought Hastur, _any_ place was a bad place to die. 

But he wasn't going to die. He could run, he could evade Zirah, there were ways. And hiding places were never a problem for those of Hastur's kind. 

The problem, thought Hastur, was finding the right one. 

He'd found several in quick succession, after Ligur -- after Zirah had -- well, _after_. But none of them had been the right one. Hastur knew, because Zirah had thought of them too. If only he had some time to _think_ about where he was going. If only he had some time he could make a plan, figure out how he could bash that bastard's head in without actually going anywhere near him . . . . 

But he didn't have any time. He couldn't stop. Ligur had stopped, if only for the tiniest fraction of a second, and look what had happened to him. 

Hastur couldn't forget the smile on Zirah's face. Every time he felt like slowing down, the image bobbed up in his mind like a corpse in a swamp, and he put on a new burst of speed. 

He didn't even know where he was, or what was going on around him, or even if he was still at molecular level. His whole being was concentrated in the act of flight. 

Almost his whole being. A tiny part of Hastur's mind -- very tiny, considering the present size of the rest of him -- ranted at him, told him he should've _known_, stupid son-of-a-bitch, did he really think a few thousand years on Earth could have changed Zirah? 

He'd forgotten. Hell knew, he'd never been close to Zirah even at the beginning. They were barely acquaintances. Sure, he'd heard the rumours, but believing them was something else. And after Zirah had spent all that time on Earth, who could blame Hastur for thinking he'd grown soft? He'd certainly looked it. Tea-pots with fucking flowers, books and babies and that horrible coat he'd taken to wearing. He'd gone native. Hastur couldn't be blamed for thinking he'd be a soft touch. 

It had been a golden opportunity. Ask Zirah a few nasty questions, smack him around, put a bullet in his head, job over. And oblique promises of what came afterwards. Hastur had never been one to let a chance to scale the social strata of Hell go by. 

He had ignored the instincts that screamed at him not to volunteer. It had sounded so _easy_. And sure, Zirah was weird, but Hastur managed to convince himself that Zirah's weirdness was nothing compared to his own old-fashioned nastiness. 

That was his first mistake. 

He'd thought the fact that Zirah had been so long out of Hell would make the demon easier to handle. That was his second mistake. 

He'd never thought to remember that they had kicked Zirah out of Hell because _they hadn't wanted him there._ Because everybody was _scared_ of him. Hastur had nearly forgotten all about how it'd been, before, but during his terrified flight the memories had started popping out, as if they'd been lying in wait for this very moment. 

The way Zirah's face, oddly angelic even after the Fall, had looked in the light of the flames. How he'd curl his lip whenever there was a particularly juicy bit of torture going on, and then absent-mindedly tear out some sufferer's voicebox because its screaming was getting on his nerves. Beelzebub, saying, "Fuck, make Zzzzirah go up. Bloke givezzz me the williezz." 

Hastur had been too caught up in dreams of advancement to notice that no-one else had offered to do the job. 

That was his third mistake. 

"Next time they offer you a golden opportunity," shrieked the tiny part of Hastur that was still thinking to the rest of him, "ask 'em who you've got to opportune. And _run_." 

If there had been any other part of Hastur capable of replying, it would have pointed out that there was no need for such injunctions at the time. Just the thought of Zirah's face -- 

he could feel Zirah's presence, ever closer -- 

And he put on speed he didn't know he still had, electrons going past him in a blur. 

He could outrun Zirah. He was smart. He was nasty, even for a demon. Even Zirah couldn't chase him forever, Hastur thought. 

That was his last mistake. 

* * *

Once, when Newt was twelve, his mother had taken him to visit his Aunt Madeleine, who drank. 

Every family has an Aunt Madeleine. Sometimes it's an Uncle Roger, sometimes Sean's Julia plays the role; but there's always at least one in the family -- the one everybody politely avoids mentioning at gatherings, the one the older cousins whisper about, the one no child resembles unless his mum is quarrelling with an outspoken great-aunt. 

Aunt Madeleine's house had been pathetically neat. There had been tiny photographs on the wall, of herself, her ex-husband and her children, beaming nervously out of the past. Newt and his mother had stared woodenly at these photographs, sitting in burning silence as Aunt Madeleine weaved past the coffee tables and knocked vases over, giggling and apologising nervously. 

"My medication, you know, it makes me a bit woozy -- whoops! Sit down, sit down. I can handle it. I never liked this porce -- porcel -- knick-knack anyway, ha ha. Are you sure you don't want some biscuits?" 

Later Aunt Madeleine had broken a cup, then broken down on the couch, screaming at Newt's mother when she gingerly tried to comfort her. 

That day had always rated as the most embarrassing Newt had ever experienced. 

Until now. 

It was all the fault of the mysterious client, whose real name Newt was certain wasn't even _close_ to "uhmumbleSmith". It wasn't that he was ineffably cool and incalculably loathsome -- that Newt could forgive. But he was also absolutely _insane_. 

He'd seemed all right at first -- glum, but Newt was beginning to understand that this was the client's normal state. At least it meant Newt didn't have to talk to him; talk, Newt was morally certain, would only reveal more traits in the client for Newt to hate, like a classy, high-paid job, or an unsuspected knack for computers. The client seemed to prefer silence, hunching in his seat and fiddling with that ridiculous walking stick he'd insisted on bringing along. 

_That_ part was all right. It was bearable. Newt could just concentrate on the road, and the client could fidget unhappily, and all was, if not well, a pretty good substitute for it. It was the part that came after that shook Newt. 

It started just as they were getting deeper into the countryside. 

And _what_ countryside it was -- green fields and trees and friendly-looking cows and illimitable stretches of glorious blue sky. Newt hadn't known you got countryside like this anywhere but in pictures. He was beginning to think he'd driven right out of England, into some bizarre alternate universe where everything was exactly the same except that it was completely different, and -- more importantly -- much prettier. 

It couldn't be said that he'd started suspecting then. The little pricklings of doubt in his head weren't distinct enough to be called suspicion. But they had been there. Newt was learning to recognise phenomena when he saw them, and while he was pretty sure you wouldn't find a single nipple where it wasn't supposed to be in this place, there was a vague cloud of distrust at the back of his mind. Countryside wasn't supposed to look like this. _Nowhere_ looked like this. There was something . . . . 

This was when the client distracted him from the strangeness of the scenery by upping the weirdness quotient himself. 

If Newt had paid attention in the past few minutes, he'd have noticed that the usual look of doomed despair that graced Caphriel's face had slowly lifted. An odd mixture of perplexity and unbelieving bliss had dimmed his eyes; eventually even the perplexity left, overpowered by the bliss. Caphriel's spine had melted, and he'd slid down the seat bonelessly. 

Newt had noticed none of this. But he _did_ notice the groan that followed. 

Newt started, looked over, and found his passenger sprawled in his seat, looking like he'd just experienced ecstasy of a most illegal kind. 

"Mr., uh, Smith?" said Newt. 

A pause. Then -- 

"Yes?" said Caphriel dreamily. 

"Are you all right?" said Newt nervously, although, come to think of it, that wasn't the right question at all. The man was obviously all right; in fact, he was a little _too_ right. The right question was, "_Why_ are you all right?", but Newt doubted he would get an answer that made sense. 

"Hmm?" said Caphriel. "_Oh._" 

Then, 

"_Ah._" 

And as if that weren't enough: 

"Oh, _God._" 

Newt glared at the client in desperate incomprehension. He could feel a hot embarrassed flush begin to climb his neck at the sounds the man was making. They were positively obscene. 

What could have kicked this off? Newt wondered. He'd been perfectly all right just a minute ago -- well, not all right, but normal enough, and now he was happy and limp in his seat, making sounds generally reserved for privacy. 

It probably wouldn't have comforted Newt to know that it wasn't his fault he didn't understand Caphriel's bizarre behaviour. He lacked the essential information: namely, that Caphriel was an angel, and that there are certain things about angels very few people know. 

There is much dissension over the reason why angels were created, mostly among the angels themselves, as the thought of Creation has bad associations for demons, and humans are generally too terrified to think, "why angels?" when one actually descends upon them. Everyone agrees that purpose of angels is to glorify the Lord, but no-one can agree on precisely _what_ this means. Some are of the opinion that it means they should aid all living creatures, as God's creations, and hope for the best. Some think this gives them the right to prance around with a flaming sword, acting like a prat. Many believe in just standing around and adoring the Lord by hitting high C's. 

Whatever the reason they were created, most angels come equipped with a special capacity for love -- the sensing, giving and receiving thereof. 

As angels go, Caphriel was not terribly special. But he did have one special trait. He was, as Zirah had so often disapprovingly pointed out, _susceptible._

It's an angel's job to be sensitive. Caphriel was very, very good at his job. And a countryside's worth of free love had just been dumped directly into his head. 

"Wow," said Caphriel. 

"_Mr. Smith!_" 

Caphriel jumped. 

"What? -- Sorry, what did you say?" 

Newt was glaring at Caphriel with an aggrieved expression, as if his sudden inexplicable happiness were a personal affront. His indignation died down under the glare of his own reflection in Caphriel's sunglasses. 

"Are you all right?" he said lamely. 

"Yeah? Hmm? Oh, yeah. Yeah, fine. Great." Caphriel grinned and stretched lazily. The car swerved. 

When Caphriel looked over, Newt had gone a shade of red reminiscent of a well-cooked lobster, and was staring at the road with furious concentration. A trace of sanity crept back into Caphriel's brain and suggested that perhaps everything was not quite as all right as it felt. 

Caphriel tried to sort out his thoughts. They seemed to have got lost in a happy pink cloud several miles ago, and now they were a lot fuzzier and softer around the edges. 

"It's this place," he explained. (Was he drunk? Nah, he hadn't drunk anything since -- since last night, yeah? Wow. He couldn't remember ever feeling this great except in Heaven.) "It's got -- good vibes. Yeah, that's it. Good vibes. I mean, you can really -- don't you really feel the love here?" 

He didn't giggle, but it was a close shave. 

"Mr. Smith," said Newt sternly, keeping his eyes on the road, "if you don't tell me exactly what it is that you have inhaled or ingested or injected into yourself, I will be forced to--" 

_What are you going to be forced to do,_ said an annoying voice in the back of Newt's head, _wave your firelighters at him?_

Fortunately, Newt didn't have to come up with a smart answer to the annoying voice, because just then he ran over a girl on a bicycle. 

It might have comforted him a little to know that in one possible future, she was going to cast this incident up at him in every argument they would have in the next fifty years. Of course, in every other possible future, the world ended the next day and they all died in agony. So either way, the accident didn't really matter, in the great scheme of things. 

It was a shame Newt didn't think in terms of the great scheme of things, really.


	9. Chapter 8

**CHAPTER 8**

"I hope you're happy now," said Anathema severely. 

Newt was just emerging from the starry darkness behind his eyes when her voice hit him like a sledgehammer in the forehead. He tried to dive back into oblivion, but it was too late. His eyes were open. 

A face peered down into his. A female face. Definitely the face of a female. 

"He's awake," said the vision before him. 

_Not such a bad dream after all,_ Newt thought muzzily, hope stirring within him, but then another voice pierced the smear that was currently masquerading as his mind. 

"Is he all right?" said 'Mr. Smith,' and Newt stiffened as if at an electric shock. 

Not Heaven, then. Probably not Hell, either, but Newt wouldn't bet on it. 

"I'm fine," he said curtly. His throat felt like someone had been sprinkling sawdust into it, just for the sadistic fun of it. It seemed like the sort of thing the universe would do, and indeed persistently kept doing, to Newt. 

He tried to sit up. His head disapproved of this idea, and expressed its disapproval by imploding. 

"Careful!" said the definitely female voice. "You hit your head on the steering wheel. I think you might have a concussion--" 

"He doesn't," said Mr. Smith. His face hovered into sight, although Newt would infinitely have preferred it not to. "Sit up. Come on." 

Newt blinked distrustfully at Mr. Smith, but he tried his advice anyway, screwing up his eyes in preparation for -- 

The complete lack of any pain whatsoever. Newt touched his head gingerly. It felt all right. It felt much clearer than it usually did, in fact. Newt usually felt like his head been stuffed full of cotton-wool when he was born, and nobody had bothered to tell him, but now he could feel the shape of every thought with an unfamiliar crystal clarity. It was unnerving. 

It was _weird_. He almost felt he could understand calculus in this state. 

"Oh my God, did I hurt you?" he said to Anathema, as the last memory clicked into place. 

"No, I'm fine," said Anathema, "no thanks to your driving skills, I might add. I thought I might have broken a leg, but Mr. -- Smith assures me I'm unharmed." 

She slanted a look at Mr. Smith, made of equal parts suspicion and -- 

Fascination, Newt realised wearily. 

Of course. Not that he'd ever _had_ a chance, but, well . . . usually girls never really looked at him. Their eyes went sort of unfocused after the first glance, as if they'd taken stock and automatically put him on the same level of importance as lint, and for the rest of the night -- or day, or whatever -- Newt had to be resigned to being called "Ned," or "Nick," or not being called at all. 

This was the first time a girl, much less one as attractive as this girl, had taken a look at him and kept on talking to him. And his enigmatic client with his fancy sunglasses and his trenchcoat made for brooding in _had_ to be there. Of course. Anything he might have gained with being injured and lying in bed with a romantic pallour had been blown out of the water by Mr. Smith's style and his cheekbones and his man-of-mystery brusqueness. 

This is Life, Newt thought. You meet a really _amazing_ girl -- all right, run over her, but no harm no foul and at least she isn't giving you that sort of amazed, pitying look you'd think she'd save for squashed earthworms -- at any rate you've made contact with this incredible girl, and she isn't actively backing away, and then a flash bastard with a fancy strut and probably more psychological problems than Michael Jackson and Hannibal Lecter put together strolls right in and it's goodbye the first and only time a girl's ever shown any interest in you, hello squashed earthworms. 

He's probably a computer engineer, too. 

No, thought Newt. This isn't Life. This is _your_ life. 

"Sorry about that," Newt muttered, feeling absolutely miserable. "Um. What is your -- er, if you don't mind me asking, that is--" 

"Her name's Anathema Device, and she's renting this cottage," Mr. Smith said shortly. "If you're feeling better" -- his tone implied that it didn't particularly matter even if Newt didn't -- "I think we'd better stop trespassing on her time and be on our way." 

Newt wondered if it was possible to make someone's ears fall off through pure hatred. He decided it was worth a try. 

"You're not trespassing on my time," said Anathema. "I was expecting you." 

She was still giving Mr. Smith that look -- bright and probing and yes, fascinated. She didn't even seem to notice Newt, now that he wasn't whimpering with pain. 

"Really," said Mr. Smith. He sounded uninterested, in that distinct way that said he would soon, however, be very interested in doing extremely nasty things to anyone who got in his way. 

"Yes," said Anathema. She handed him a card. Mr. Smith looked at it. 

His face stilled. 

"Well, Mr. . . . Pulsifer?" said Anathema significantly. 

"Well, what?" said Newt. 

"It's alive," said Mr. Smith. There was something in his voice that stilled Anathema, who had whirled around to look at Newt as if he was even worse than a squashed earthworm -- he was a squashed earthworm _who had surprised her_. She stared at Mr. Smith. 

"I'm Newton Pulsifer," said Newt weakly. "He's -- mad, I think." 

Anathema looked from Newt to Mr. Smith, and back again. 

"Mad as in angry, or mad as in insane?" she said. 

"It's alive," Mr. Smith repeated. "He was telling the truth." He crumpled the card in his hand. 

"Oh, God. What did you _do_?" he muttered. 

"Both, possibly," said Newt. 

"Ah." 

Newt shook his head, trying to clear it. He felt bewildered, which was probably why the complete lack of any pounding pain failed to register. 

"How did you know my name?" he asked, going for the safest question he could think of. 

"Your arrival was prophesied by my ancestor," said Anathema glumly. The revelation that Newt was himself instead of being Mr. Smith seemed to have deflated her. 

She thought _she_ was disappointed, Newt thought gloomily. Newt was the one who had to _be_ himself. 

"Is that so," he said noncommittally. 

But Anathema was looking up again, a glitter in her eyes Newt was already learning to admire. Or dread. He wasn't sure which. 

"But that doesn't explain _him_," she murmured, more to herself than to Newt. 

"Explain what about him?" said Newt. 

Anathema glanced around and leaned closer to Newt. He took a breath, and was swamped by the scent of lily-of-the-valley. It made him feel very -- well, extremely -- well. 

"His aura's filling the room," said Anathema seriously, as if this was supposed to make sense to Newt. 

"Um," said Newt. "This is . . . wrong?" 

"It's not usual, no!" She glared at Mr. Smith. 

"I'm not putting up with this," she added. "I gave him a glass of lemonade before you woke up. I have a right to some answers." 

She strode over to Mr. Smith and grabbed his arm. 

"Who _are_ you?" she said. "I thought you were the witchfinder, and that's why you're--" She waved her free hand -- indicating the unusual behaviour of his aura, Newt supposed. "But you're not a witchfinder, and -- Agnes doesn't even mention you! Who _are_ you?" 

Mr. Smith turned slowly towards her. Anathema dropped her hand. 

"You're a witch," he said. 

"Yes," said Anathema, and her face clouded. "Wait -- how did you know that?" 

"One has one's ways," said Mr. Smith vaguely. His expression was unreadable. 

For a moment Newt was seized with an intense desire to knock the man's sunglasses off of his smug face. It wasn't just that Newt wanted to do him serious harm -- although he did; he really, really _did_ -- the sunglasses were driving Newt mad, simply because they were there. They transformed Mr. Smith's face into a cipher. Anything could be going on under those glasses, one felt; all the demons of Hell could be dancing in the man's eyes, hidden by those mirror lenses. Newt had never realised how important eyes were to one's impression of a face before. Mr. Smith had sharply-defined features: good cheekbones and an expressive mouth, but his face might as well have been a blob for the efficiency with which it conveyed his emotions. His sunglasses negated expression, robbed his face of any semblance of humanity. 

Most of all, they made him look like a prat. 

He might have been looking intently at Anathema. He might have been staring at a point just above her left ear. He might even have been taking a quick upright nap behind those glasses. It was impossible to tell. 

"You've seen something," he said. 

All right, he probably hadn't been taking a nap. 

Newt really did dislike him a _lot_. 

Anathema glared at Mr. Smith. Newt perked up. Yes, that's it, smack him down -- 

"Why should I?" she said, her tone inviting an answer. 

Or not. Newt deflated. 

Mr. Smith stared at her. Then he shook himself. He had the air of a man who had made a decision. 

"To start with," he said, "I'm an angel." 

Newt started to laugh, helplessly, hopelessly, but then Mr. Smith took off his sunglasses. 

* * * 

This always worked. Caphriel couldn't understand it, but as with everything else on God's good Earth -- including God's good Earth itself -- he didn't have to understand it for it to work. 

This was the part he knew: no matter how unlike an average human's perception of an angel he was, no matter how skeptical that average human happened to be, all it took for the human to believe he was an angel was one look at his eyes. 

It was in the eyes, Zirah had explained. Caphriel had asked _what_ was in the eyes, exactly, and Zirah had said: everything. But in that case, Caphriel had said, why do people not -- 

Not what? Zirah had asked. And Caphriel had said, nothing. Nothing. Never mind. 

Three hours later, hoping Zirah wouldn't make the connection, he'd casually asked Zirah if he made eye contact with humans very often. 

"Only if they're very ill," said Zirah. "Usually I try not to. You must have noticed how nervous they get when you stare at them, poor things. But if they're dying, well, it's nice for them to have a glimpse of what's coming, don't you think?" 

Caphriel had agreed. Then he'd gone off and got thoroughly drunk in order to avoid wondering whether Zirah visited the dying a lot, and _why_ they were dying, when it came to that, and if they really did see what was coming in his eyes. Not good things to think about. It was never good to think too deeply after a talk with Zirah. 

He hadn't asked again. He'd resigned himself to the fact that apparently his eyes showed a lot more than Zirah's did, or at least, they showed the sort of thing that people were willing to see. He supposed he could understand why humans might want to ignore anything Zirah's eyes told them. 

All the same, the invention of smoked glasses had been a blessing from God. He'd had to wear all sorts of ridiculous things before he'd got his hands on one of those babies: long fringes, blindfolds, large hats, and on one memorable occasion, a frozen fish. He'd gone through the entire ninth century with his eyes closed, literally. 

Caphriel had been long enough on Earth for reverence to unnerve him. He almost preferred abuse. It had been good enough for the Son of God. 

It wasn't always reverence, of course. Sometimes it was awe that lit their faces. Sometimes, as with Anathema now, it was the outrage of the believer presented with incontrovertible proof. Sometimes it was terror, and no matter how many times Caphriel said, "Do not be afraid," they never listened. Sometimes it was nothing more than pure, surprised recognition. 

All reactions made Caphriel uncomfortable. They were just -- too much, too much emotion, too much of a reminder of how little he deserved that sort of feeling. They were just his eyes, weren't they? Even if they did show his true self, it was nothing to write home about. Right? He didn't get it. 

Later, Newt tried to explain it to Caphriel. 

It was, he said, as if someone had carefully sliced through every last defence you had, so that all you had left were your secrets, your sad little sordid hatreds, your pathetic fears, your trivial loves, your vast incomprehension. And you saw these things as the pitiable things they were, in the light of those kind, weary eyes. You felt that they saw everything, everything you had ever seen or dreamed or hoped, and that everything was only a miniscule part of all those eyes had seen. They saw everything you _were_, and knew it for what it was . . . 

And they loved you anyway. Not as a god might, or a parent, but as a friend, whose only authority is his love, whose only power is his understanding. 

This, Caphriel pointed out, made no sense, since he did _not_ love everybody he saw, and in fact more than half of the human race was made up of utter bastards he'd kick as soon as look at, no offence. 

"Yes," Newt said, "but we can't tell *that* until you start talking." 

But that was all in the future, after the end of the world that wasn't, when an angel and a human could have a post-Apocalyptic drink to celebrate never having to see each other again, in confidence that the adventure was over, the book was closed, and tomorrow was the first day of the rest of their lives. 

This was now, and Caphriel was beginning to think those guys in Salem might have had a point. Complete wankers every last one of them, of course, but they'd had some sound concepts. Good thinking. 

Anathema _knew_ about angels. He didn't have to tell her not to be afraid. 

Telling her to have a Valium might be a good idea, though. Not that she would listen. 

She was rather too busy shouting at the top of her voice. 

* * * 

"Are you here to tell us about the end of the world?" said Anathema. "Because we already know, thank you very much!" 

"We do?" said Newt. 

"No, look--" 

"I'm psychic, you know! There's no getting away from it! I've known all about the end of the world since I could _read_! I used to have a Barbie called the Whore of Babylon! What kind of a childhood do you think that is?" 

"Not a very common one?" Newt offered. 

"I'm afraid I can't see what this has got to do with--" 

"My family's been trying to figure out how to stop Armageddon for almost as long as it's existed!" 

"What, Armageddon?" said Newt. 

"No, my family!" Anathema looked like she couldn't decide who she wanted to glare at more, and settled on directing the air between Newt and the angel a look that could have set it on fire. "And now you come prancing around thinking you can blow your horn at us? I don't _think_ so!" 

"That's, ah, Gabriel, actually," said the angel. "I'm _Caph_riel--" 

"I don't need assurances of having a happy afterlife if only I believe in some ridiculously outdated deity!" said Anathema, poking Caphriel in the chest. "I'm perfectly happy with _this_ life, thank you very much!" 

Caphriel was evidently unused to being poked in the chest. He bristled like the fretful porpentine. 

"Listen, you silly woman, I'm not here to proselytise, and I doubt--" 

"Oh, that's the way, is it? I should've expected it of a religion founded by a gang of patriarchal blowhards--" 

"--would want you in His Heaven even if you got down on your knees and begged--" 

"--all, my ancestor was _murdered_ by witchhunters working in your so-called God's name--" 

"--He did, you can go to Hell for all I care--" 

"--know God exists doesn't mean I'm going to believe Him, and you can tell Him that for--" 

"_Will you calm down?_" 

They both shut up. Newt beamed at them from the bed. Before Anathema could start talking again -- Newt could already estimate how long her silences would be, which was: not very -- he said, 

"I think it might be a good idea to listen to the nice gentleman." 

Anathema closed her mouth again. Caphriel said, quickly, 

"You're right, the world is going to end soon. But I know as much about it as you do -- probably less," he amended, at a look from Anathema. "And I don't want it to happen any more than you do. I'm not here in an official capacity, I sw -- give you my word. I'm just looking for someone who could help me find the Antichrist. Will you help me?" 

Anathema narrowed her eyes. Caphriel had put his glasses back on, so he could not narrow his for dramatic effect, but Newt could practically hear his teeth grinding from where he sat. He did not seem a very patient angel, but then again, from what Newt remembered of Christian mythology, angels generally weren't known for their patience. Halos and those fashionable white robes and bringing bad news from Heaven, yes, but not patience. 

Newt himself sat with his hands and eyes and mind wide open, waiting. He felt very calm, and clear, and immensely wise. It was a pleasant change from the earlier panic and irritation. 

He wondered if it was God, but decided it was probably just adrenalin. 

Finally Anathema stepped back and shrugged, and the tension in the room dissipated. 

"Tell me," said Anathema. 

Caphriel blinked. 

"What?" 

"We'll trade information," said Anathema. "You tell me exactly what's going on, and I'll tell you what I saw in the cemetery north of the hospital." 

Not a muscle budged in Caphriel's face, but they did not budge in that expressive way that meant he was exerting a great deal of control over every single one. 

"I see," he said, after a long time. "Fine. What do you want to know?" 

"Everything." 

Caphriel's mouth twisted. 

"You humans don't ask for much, do you," he said. "Everything. God." He said it not as an exclamation, as a normal person might, but with a distinctly personal inflection, the way one might remonstrate with a beloved but often embarrassing parent. "Where do I start?" 

"At the beginning." 

At that, Caphriel took off his glasses in a strangely ceremonial gesture, as if what he was about to tell needed all his honesty. Newt saw that his grey eyes had gone dark and blurred. Then he looked away. Caphriel's eyes made him want to fidget. 

"No," said Caphriel. His voice, too, had gone dark and hazy, heavy with long ago. He spoke slowly, as one does who remembers things long forgotten. 

"No," he said again. "It started before that." 


	10. Chapter 9

CHAPTER 9 

This was the worst torture Zirah inflicted on his victims. He called it Being Sensible About Things. 

"Let's be sensible," he would say earnestly, or else, "_Do_ be sensible," or even, "If you'd just think about it sensibly. . . ." 

All the fight had gone out of Hastur. He was weeping brokenly, wretchedly and without shame, like a child. Unlike most children, however, he wept for no reason but that it relieved his, for the lack of a better word, heart. He expected no other relief to come from his tears. 

With any other demon, he would have been killed long ago -- demons were simply embarrassed by tears in a fellow demon. Signs of weakness were all right: signs of weakness in another demon were, in fact, signs of impending promotion, but tears like those Hastur shed were just bloody irritating. They were the tears you cried when nothing was left, not even the certainty that it couldn't get any worse. They reminded demons uncomfortably of Hell, in which most demons manage to survive quite contentedly by forgetting how unpleasant it is. 

Hastur hadn't cried since he had been cast down from Heaven, and the holy tears had scalded his face even as they left his eyes. He was making a horrible creaking sound, like a rusty pulley, and tears kept coming out of the wrong orifices when he wasn't concentrating -- his ears kept leaking -- but he was making a damned good try, all the same. It was distressing Zirah, although not in the right way. He made no sign of finishing Hastur off quickly. 

"My dear fellow, bear up," he said heartily. "For shame, a big demon like you crying! There's nothing I can do about it. You must consider the circumstances, you know. You must -- oh, blow your nose, man!" 

He thrust a cambric handkerchief in Hastur's face. Hastur ignored it. A tear trickled out of what was left of his mouth. 

Zirah knelt in front of Hastur. Hastur twitched. 

"Look," Zirah said, "I can't very well have you around, can I? You know I'm always glad to see a colleague, but I'm a busy -- man. I've got work to do. Yes, you would be glad to help, and I'm sure you're excellent in your own line, I've always admired your efficiency, but Earth isn't your area. You would only get in the way. And . . ." 

Zirah paused. He didn't like to touch upon the delicate subject of Hastur's purpose in bumping into him at a time when Hastur didn't seem to be up to it, but he felt it would only hinder communication to pretend that Hastur was just visiting him to have a nice cup of tea and a chat about the weather. 

"And then there's this business of murdering," he said vaguely. 

"Murdering?" squeaked Hastur. Tears started dripping out of his ears again. 

"Me," explained Zirah. 

"I wouldn't mind it in the ordinary way," he added hastily. "We've all got to follow our orders, don't I know it, and it's always nice to have a holiday from work, see how things are down in -- down in the old club. Smell the old brimstone and sulphur, that sort of thing. But you see, one has one's obligations, and this is a bad time. There's that latest shipment I just received, and I'm supervising a group of nice young men, they're thinking of going into the terro -- freedom fighting line; all they need is a little encouragement. And what with the mess in the Middle East, and this and that, I really can't spare the time for a visit below. 

"Oh, and there's the Antichrist, too," Zirah said absently. "I have great hopes for him. So you see, I couldn't possibly get away right now." 

"Hopes?" croaked Hastur. 

Zirah looked at the wrecked, twitching form, his eyes grave and kind. 

"I suppose it wouldn't hurt to tell you," he said, and he bent and whispered a single word in Hastur's ear. 

Hastur's eyes widened. 

"You're _nuts_," he said, telling the plain unvarnished truth for the first time in centuries. 

Zirah stabbed his eyes out, and went away. He spent a full half hour dutifully trying to recall any good memories he had of Hastur, and finally settled on a memory that was only mildly unpleasant. Then he forgot all about it. 

There was still such a lot to be done. 

Behind him, in the darkness, a whispered word hung quiet in the air. And Hastur, in pieces, laughed a hideous bubbling laugh. 

He was still laughing when he died. 

It was hours later, in a cemetery. 

Caphriel would wish later that he'd never gone, never asked Anathema to tell him what had happened in the cemetery. He'd just -- he'd wanted to find Zirah. Ostensibly his reason was that Zirah had answers to questions Caphriel hardly dared to voice to himself, but the truth was, what with one thing and another, Caphriel could barely remember the shape of his rage. He remembered why he was angry, and he knew why he was there, but all outrage had been supplanted by a simple need to see Zirah, even more than to know what was going on. 

The imminence of the end of the world hung over his head like a lowering storm cloud. He wanted to stop it. He had no idea how to go about doing that. 

Zirah. If he found Zirah, everything would make more sense. 

This had never proved true in the past -- things generally made _less_ sense when Zirah was involved -- but Caphriel clung to the thought as the only certainty in the confused darkness of the world. Find Zirah: everything else could wait till later. 

So here he was, and his life was about to change in a way he'd never looked for but always dreaded. 

For now, though, it was green and quiet, and the dead made no reproaches. Anathema Device was pacing around the cemetery, trying to retrace the steps of the men-shaped beings she'd seen, and Newt was wrestling with the door of the Wasabi, muttering things like, "Not much hurt," and "Good as new," with a sort of hopeless, determined cheerfulness. Nothing seemed about to pounce out of the shadows and do horrible things to Caphriel. 

He let himself relax, just a little. 

And then he saw it. 

If anyone had told Anathema she would be spending the few precious hours before the last day of the world began telling an angel about a confrontation she'd witnessed between gun-toting disappearing men who weren't actually men at all, she would have lau -- well. She probably wouldn't have laughed. She'd probably have first ascertained that the person wasn't clairvoyant and consulted Agnes to make sure, but _then_ she would have laughed. Heartily, too. 

This seemed to be exactly what she was doing, however. It was funny how life worked that way. You just never knew what was going to happen. Even having an ancestor who'd written the only accurate book of prophecies in history didn't help, especially as that ancestor not only was unable to spell, but also seemed to have spent most of her life drunk, off her head, or, more usually, both. 

"He was here," said Anathema. She was standing in front of a small grey tombstone. She turned a circle, slowly. "There were two other me -- two others. One of them was hiding behind a bush, over there." She indicated a clump of shrubbery some distance away from where she was standing. 

"I remember thinking that was odd," she added. She looked up. Caphriel was standing some way away, head tipped back. His sunglasses glinted in the dying sunlight. 

"I said, I thought that was odd," she said, raising her voice. 

"No," said Caphriel. He didn't move. "Just instinct. He probably knew Zirah." 

Then he dropped his head, rolling his shoulders, and turned to face Anathema. 

"What happened then?" 

"I couldn't hear much," said Anathema. "But the one not in the bush was threatening your friend. He had a gu -- " 

She stopped, looking at Caphriel anxiously, but his face was smooth and untroubled. The corner of his mouth quirked up. 

"Armed, was he? That was clever," he said, with an amusement that had nothing of mirth in it. 

"Your friend, is he going to be okay?" said Anathema uncertainly. Caphriel shrugged. 

"He isn't," he said. 

There was a pause. Newt's voice drifted over from the car, muttering, "Take more than that to put you out for good, eh?" He didn't sound terribly certain about it. 

"Ah," said Anathema. She coughed. "Well, as I was saying . . ." 

Caphriel let his attention wander. 

He liked graveyards. Zirah mocked him gently about this -- it's all a part of the black clothes and the sunglasses, he said. You're such a poseur. The affection and humour were comforting and deeply unsettling at the same time; Caphriel was never quite sure if he liked it or if Zirah in a light mood made him nervous. 

But his fondness for cemeteries wasn't put on. There was something inexpressibly soothing about them, about the end of earthly life. Caphriel liked thinking that whatever the people under the soil had suffered, the worst was over now. There was something selfish in it as well -- now that they were dead, they were out of his jurisdiction. They weren't his responsibility anymore. He didn't have to worry about them; somebody else -- somebody probably far better-equipped for the job -- was taking care of it. 

It was small and cowardly, and it'd given him more than one sleepless night agonising about his sins, but that didn't negate the feeling of peace death gave him. 

And really, thought Caphriel later, he should've known better, because when was anything ever that simple? As if you could simply cut off at one point and say, it isn't my business anymore. I can't do anything about it. As if you could _stop_. 

It was always his business. There was no such thing as not being able to do anything about it. That wasn't even the issue. You just went ahead and tried anyway, fuck what you could or couldn't do. 

He could no longer remember whether this was part of his being an angel or whether it was something he'd learnt over the years on Earth, but he knew it was as much a part of him as the wings and the sunglasses. 

Trying to kid himself about it was as much use as telling himself that everything would work out all right. And because Fate was a bitch and God for all His loving-kindness was ineffable (and wasn't that just a _splendid_ excuse), the world decided to remind him in the most painful way it possibly could. 

There was a tombstone. There was a verse on it, and one date. 

They'd only needed one. 

"Caphriel?" said Anathema. Caphriel heard it through the roaring that filled his ears, but her voice was pale beside his suddenly vivid-hued thoughts. He ignored the panic in the witch's voice and stepped forward, kneeling in one controlled movement. 

He was distantly aware that he was moving too carefully, like someone who'd had to learn how to work a human body. He found, with some surprise, that it wasn't because he was afraid of falling to pieces if he let go of the control. There was a saying for the situation, he thought, something to do with horses and barn doors. A part of his mind searched for the precise wording, chased after a remembered fragment of a Sumerian proverb that meant the same thing, compared the imagery of both phrases, wondered at the real absence of any impulse to scream. The rest of him moved his hand, tracing his fingers over the lettering on the stone. 

It was small and neat in an apologetic sort of way. Some space had been cleared around it, and someone had left flowers. It had been looked after, unlike most of the other graves. That was probably what had caught Caphriel's eye. 

There was no name on it. The chi -- _it_ hadn't lived long enough for it to be given a name, Caphriel thought with that strange detachment, as if his mind was a million years away from the rest of him, the part of him that could hurt. Anyway, there had been no-one to name it. 

Zirah could have done it, but he wouldn't have felt it was right. 

Caphriel could _see_ him, standing over the grave in some absurd mockery of mourning -- no, worse than a mockery, because the mourning would have been genuine. Zirah did sorrow so well. He would have been wearing something black, watching with tear-filled eyes as the pathetic little body was lowered into the ground. And his grief would have been as real as anything else about him. Caphriel had felt it before, digging into him with poison-tipped claws. 

Zirah had stood here, and he'd dared to cry for what lay under the tombstone. He'd dared to buy the stone, with its lonely date (one date, for birth and death), and the words strung across it like a curse. 

He'd _dared_. 

Caphriel curled his fingers, the stone scraping resentful lines along his skin, and felt faith howl into him like a blizzard. 

Of course, just when Newt'd got the door shut and the Wasabi properly locked against any marauding car thieves that might be lurking in Tadfield, Caphriel got up and said in a voice like ice, 

"Let's go." 

Anathema'd still been talking, and she blinked, off-balance. Newt had a suspicion that being off-balance wasn't something she was used to. It took an angel bringing news of the end of the world to shake Anathema Device. He welled with absurdly proprietary pride. 

"But -- you wanted to know -- " 

"I know enough," said Caphriel. Something had changed. His face was the same, but his voice . . . there was something in it, pain half-scabbed over and badly-hidden. "We should go. There isn't much time." 

"To do _what_?" said Anathema, exasperation trumping bewilderment. 

Caphriel's head turned towards her, and it was weird, but he looked calmer than he had yet in the short time Newt had known him. He wasn't searching anymore. Somehow it made him genuinely inhuman, in a way he hadn't been when he'd just been a bloke in flashy sunglasses. 

"Save the world," he said, in the way people have when they're saying something obvious but don't care if you know it or not. 

He swept out of the cemetery like vengeance in a black coat. Newt let Anathema follow him, demanding explanations. He made his way among the tombstones, kneeling beside the one that Caphriel had been looking at. 

There were crushed flowers on the grave. Caphriel probably had dead flower smeared on his knees. Newt studied them as if they offered some kind of answer. For some reason, he didn't want to look at the stone. 

Then he did. 

He was half-disappointed to find that it was nothing special. There was no name on it, and only one date -- that was odd; Newt was no specialist on tombstones, but he'd thought they generally came with two dates on. There was more: a quote, the sort of Biblical stuff they always put on tombstones. 

"_Suffer the little children to come unto me_," said Newt aloud to himself. "That's not even from Revelations." 

"No," said Caphriel. "Are you coming?" 

He was standing behind Newt with his hands in his pockets, looking enigmatic and black-clad. Newt got up slowly, dusting himself off for something to do with hands. He was surprised to realise that he was afraid -- real, knee-weakening, thunder-and-lightning fear. He was vibrating slightly. He gritted his teeth so they wouldn't chatter. 

Caphriel looked at the tombstone, his face a mask. 

"The filth," he said, sick loathing in his voice. He turned on his foot and walked away. 

"_Suffer the little children to come unto me_," Newt whispered. He'd been right the first time. There was an answer in that. 

_Suffer the little children. _

Suffer. 

It wasn't a good answer. 

Newt raised his head, staring after Caphriel's retreating back, and wondered what he'd got himself into. 


	11. Chapter 10

CHAPTER 10

You've seen this before. You know how it goes. But this is a different world, a different time, a different ending. This is somewhere else.

Now watch. Whatever the loopier kind of philosopher may say, nothing ever happens in exactly the same way twice -- because you can say a lot of things about God, but you can't accuse him of being boring.

* * *

A man in a camelhair coat, and a van in a car park.

It was getting dark, but it was still warm. Zirah didn't actually need the coat, but he had never understood his body well enough to factor in things like heat or cold. Caphriel had learnt to shiver without having to think about it first. Zirah wore the same clothes all the time, winter or summer, and when he walked in the dark he did not stumble.

He was, when you got right down to it, simple, with the stark simplicity of a blow to the head. It was one of the things that drew Caphriel to him. Caphriel chased simplicity with breathless desperation, but he wouldn't cheat, and he cared too much, which is a surefire recipe for complexity.

Zirah, however, was simple, and this made most things easy for him. Murder, for example.

He jerked his weapon from the man's back and looked around for something to clean it with.

After all, he reflected, there was no helping it. He had the greatest esteem for the Four, as colleagues of a sort and skilled professionals. They always got the job done, and there was no better praise than that, surely; Kipling would have agreed. Zirah believed in Kipling the way he believed in Jaffa cakes and the spring.

It was nothing personal. No doubt they would agree that it was all for the best, if Zirah had had the time to explain it to them. But that was the problem, wasn't it: time. Nobody was going to have much of it left, if things were left to go on their usual messy way without any help nudging them in the right direction. And the Four were precisely the people who were trying to make sure that things _were_ going to go on to their deplorable conclusion, so in a way they were bringing it on themselves, really. Zirah couldn't _help_ it.

It was a pity he wouldn't be able to have a chat with them before he, well, before he dispatched his purpose. But that was how it was in these modern times -- nobody ever did things properly anymore.

He wiped the blood off onto the corpse's blue uniform, and lifted the weapon out of the shadow, inspecting it critically. In the dying light, the blade gleamed like a witty remark.

But there, there was nothing to be done, he thought. He would just have to get on with business. The Four would understand, once they thought things through.

And if they didn't -- well. Sacrifices had to be made for an enterprise of this sort to run smoothly. Zirah knew that better than anyone.

He shoved the delivery man's limp body into the back of his own van, and glanced around it one last time to make sure he hadn't missed anything. Three parcels lay in a heap by his feet. Beside the parcels, tattered scraps of brown paper fluttered in the wind.

Zirah nodded to himself, and flicked the sword, as if trying to slice a fly in mid-air. The sword burst into flame. Zirah smiled.

A thought made him turn and lean into the van again, stabbing the sprawled body with controlled, impersonal viciousness, until he was sure that the spirit had left the temple of his body. A spark caught on the man's clothes, and they flared up.

Zirah straightened, shaking the sword absently to put the fire out, and pondered while the smell of dead meat burning wafted from the van.

He still wasn't sure what he thought of this television business, but he had watched a few films over the years, usually in Caphriel's company. Caphriel did so like taking an interest. He seemed to think modern technology held some sort of key to the way people thought, but that was Caphriel for you -- always looking for truth in the most unlikely places, as if it was a plastic toy that came in cereal boxes.

Zirah didn't like the way they talked and dressed in the pictures, and he suspected that they contained far too many Americans to be any good for anybody, but you could learn even from the films, though of course this was not really the _right_ sort of knowledge and not a patch on books. Still, Zirah had picked up some things.

There was, he remembered, something about explosions . . . .

Five minutes later, the sky brightened by the fire engulfing the van, Zirah remembered what it was about explosions. The thing about them was: they looked _good_.

He felt extraordinarily happy. The situation was terribly grave, of course, and time was running out, but Zirah felt there ought always to be time to appreciate the beauty of the world. What else was life for, after all?

He was only trying to protect that, to keep that beauty alive for everyone. Except the man whose carcass was now cinders floating in the wind, granted, and all right, except for the people he was planning to kill with the lovely things whose delivery had been entrusted to that man, but everyone _else_ would get to enjoy the fruits of his endeavour, definitely. And they would thank him for it. They would understand, if only they made the effort. He had to do this. It was the right thing to do.

More than one soul in Hell had ended up there with Zirah's kind, endlessly patient voice echoing in their ears. Hell had been something of an improvement.

Explanations later, Zirah thought. For now, there was work to be done.

He got on with it.

* * *

Adam turned over in his sleep, snuffling gently. Magazines lay crumpled where he had dropped them when he'd fallen asleep. Ideas spiralled out of his head, weighting the air with expectation.

Outside, in the world, a sapling unfurled. A few nuclear power stations found themselves abruptly missing the nuclear part of the equation. A group of extremely intelligent ancient men in waterproof robes decided that they were, after all, alive, and that somewhere like, say, Monte Cristo would probably be more interesting than the soggy island on which they'd spent their last few -- no longer fictitious -- millennia. A pair of alien coppers were ordered to drop by Earth and have a word with the inhabitants about its shoddy atmosphere. A bunch of Tibetans started digging, for reasons unclear to themselves. A really, really big whale woke up.

There's nothing more dangerous than giving an intelligent child something new to think about.

In Anathema's cottage, a witch, an angel, and a bewildered wages clerk and part-time Witchfinder Private were holding a war council.

"Maybe," said Newt, "maybe we could find some way to put the nearest power plant out for the count for the next 24 hours? You couldn't start the end of the world without electricity, right? I mean, it'd be too awkward. People stumbling over each other in the dark and that. So they'd _have_ to stop it. And it wouldn't have to be for any longer than a day, if it's really going to happen as you say."

"It is," said Anathema. "And that idea's even worse than 'maybe we could write to the _Times_ about it'. Think of something else."

Neither of them looked at the other side of the table. The angel hadn't spoken since they'd returned from the cemetery. It was like sitting at the table with a dead person. Newt and Anathema were both pretending that there wasn't anybody there, because in a way there wasn't.

When Newt had just met the angel, he had thought of him, a bit mockingly, as Mr. Smith. When he had explained things, Newt had thought of him as Caphriel, because at least it was a better name than Mr. Smith, and it seemed to suit him.

Now, when Newt thought about him at all, which happened only when the fear overcame the careful ignorance, he thought of him as the angel. It was as good a word as any. It wasn't a name, because the thing sitting at the other side of the table wasn't a person anymore. You didn't name a vacuum.

"Right," he said, because silence seemed to focus everything, terrifyingly, on the angel, and even pointless babble was better than that. "Maybe we could call the mayor and -- "

"We have to kill him," something said.

Newt and Anathema froze, but there didn't seem to be any way around it. The angel had sat up and was leaning his elbows on the table. He looked strangely out of focus, as if Newt and Anathema were only looking at the sized-down representation of something much bigger, something huge and terrible. Newt noticed that the angel was clenching his fists so hard the knuckles were white with the strain, and immediately felt sick. Nothing about the angel was quite real anymore. There was something subtly wrong about his using his body the way a human might. It was like watching a doll being made to laugh. It was _creepy_.

Anathema then did the bravest thing she had ever done or would ever do in her life, the one thing Newt never forgot or stopped loving her for. She said,

"Who?"

* * *

Once you've seen one wartorn country, you've seen them all. The minor details of geography, climate, architecture all blur into meaninglessness under the heavy pall of human suffering.

Zirah disliked warzones intensely. They were so _untidy_. Caphriel had been surprised by how cross he had been over World War II, pointing out that this was the sort of thing Zirah's side generally approved of, but Caphriel had had it all wrong. Of course Zirah approved of carnage and destruction _in theory_. More souls for his side and all that sort of thing, oh yes, certainly he approved of it. And he would do his best to encourage war when it was happening in other countries; that was his job, after all.

He just objected to it when it was happening down the street. You couldn't keep a bookshop in a street where bombs were coming down all the time. It was bad enough having to let customers come in all the time, and they didn't even leave shrapnel lying around the place.

He'd had to put an end to it, naturally. Poor Caphriel; how tired he'd looked after that debacle. Zirah had made him a cup of tea and pointed out that after all, they hadn't bombed the bookshop, and Caphriel had buried his head in his hands and sobbed like a child. His tears had tasted like rain.

Poor Caphriel. This was for him, too.

Zirah picked his way through the psychic muddle of pain and fear, ignoring the smell of desperation in the air with practised ease, and went into a hotel.

Moved by an instinct that was one part angelic premonition and three parts simple thirst, he headed straight for the bar.

It was more or less deserted, except for a middle-aged couple who were sitting alone at their table, somewhat unnecessarily radiating the sentiment that they were _quite_ happy by themselves and weren't looking for any company, thank you.

Zirah smiled with genuine pleasure, and pulled out a chair at the table.

"Lovely weather today," he said cheerfully.

This was something about Zirah that had always puzzled Caphriel. Zirah was _good_ with people. He had a way with them.

He never had to try. That was what was so magical about it. To the untrained human eye, Zirah was unequivocally middle-aged, middle-class English white male, besides clearly being what they used to call in his day -- or at least, what would have been his day if he had been what he appeared to be -- a "confirmed bachelor". He never even tried to adapt to his surroundings -- he looked the same, sounded the same, dressed the same wherever he went. He had been known to wear tweed in the deepest heart of the Amazon. He probably wore tweed in _Hell_. He spoke every language of the world, but always, always with a plummy BBC accent.

But no matter where he went, he _fit in_. Zirah could stand in a sea of kimonos in his camelhair coat and not stand out. He always looked like he belonged exactly where he was.

Caphriel got along with people because he tried, and he listened, and it was rare enough to find a stranger who gave a damn that people forgave him his oblivious cool and his ill-judged habit of wearing sunglasses in the night-time. But Zirah got along with people because he wasn't a stranger. He was, no matter where he went, no matter who he was with, clearly and indubitably, _one of their own_.

It made striking up conversations incredibly easy. Caphriel gave understanding and compassion, but Zirah brought familiarity.

Which was why, in five minutes, he was acquainted with the intimate details of Mr. and Mrs. Threlfall's daily lives, their daughter's troubles with her David, the new refrigerator they had just bought that _would_ keep acting up, and Mr. Threlfall's delicate stomach. Zirah was an excellent listener. He nodded in all the right places, and he was neither too interested nor too bored. He cared, but not too much.

It was something, Zirah reflected, Caphriel had never got the hang of. Pity, really. It would have saved so much trouble if Caphriel had learnt how to _stop_.

"And what are you doing here, Mr. Rah?" said Mrs. Threlfall chummily. His suspiciously foreign name had given her pause at first, but Zirah's sympathy over the refrigerator had shattered her misgivings. Besides, it was impossible to doubt that Zirah was English.

He gave her his most charming smile. He liked the couple. Such nice people.

"I'm on business, I'm afraid," he said. "I'm supposed to meet a colleague here. Settle our affairs, tie up a few loose ends. You know the sort of thing."

They made sympathetic noises.

"Well, I hope you get the time to enjoy yourself after your work is done," said Mrs. Threlfall. "The beaches are lovely. And so peaceful. I always think, you know, that's what we lack in the civilised world. Peace and quiet."

"Nothing like peace and quiet for setting a man up," said Mr. Threlfall.

"I quite agree," Zirah said gently.

The door swung open. Without looking around, Zirah got up.

"Peace and quiet," he repeated. Behind him, a woman with blood-red and eyes the colour of the skies at the end of the world leaned against the bar and ordered a drink. "That's what I'm doing here, you might say. Speaking of which, if you'll excuse me . . ."

He drew a sword, apparently from thin air. Mr. and Mrs. Threlfall stared.

"It does seem a bit extreme," Zirah admitted, "but hints simply don't work with these people. I'm sure you've had colleagues like that before."

He smiled at them, friendly, familiar, the ideal neighbour they never had, and turned away, the blade already describing a curve through the air.

And then there was One.

He bent down to look at the broken thing slumped on the bar. It no longer looked human -- in death, War had revealed its true self. It was a nasty sight for anyone who wasn't used to the sort of thing, which was why Mr. and Mrs. Threlfall lay unconscious some distance away.

Death turned to face -- or, more accurately, skull -- Zirah.

Zirah met the pitiless blue glows that passed for eyes with Death serenely. You never got used to Death, precisely, but Zirah had seen him a great many times in the course of his work. And besides, he had nothing to fear. Only the unrighteous fear death.

Still, there was an awkward pause. Death had no taste for chit-chat. He didn't have a stomach or a daughter, and you couldn't imagine a seven-foot skeleton having much use for a refrigerator.

Finally he said,

WHAT ARE YOU PLAYING AT?

Zirah felt relieved. This was the sort of talk he understood.

"It's not a game," he said. "You'll see when it's over. Don't interfere more than you absolutely have to, there's a dear."

DO YOU PLAN TO DISPATCH THE OTHER TWO?

"Oh, one does one's best," said Zirah vaguely.

"Nothing personal, of course," he added hastily. "They're splendid workers and all that. But I have my reasons. There is one's duty to think of, you know."

Death was silent for a while, possibly reflecting that it could be said of Zirah that he, like the heart, had reasons of which reason knew nothing. He seemed to come to a conclusion that didn't altogether please him. Death didn't do discomfort -- it would have spoiled the image -- but even so there was something suspicious, even nervous, in the way he next said,

YOU CANNOT KILL ME.

This ought to have been obvious, but people got into the habit of saying obvious things to Zirah, usually in the kind of slow, careful voice they used for madmen and imbeciles. It made them feel safer. You could never tell what was obvious to Zirah.

"Oh, no, of course not," said Zirah. He was examining his sword for traces of blood, and spoke in an abstracted voice. "I'm sure I hope that won't be necessary. I shouldn't think it would be. You won't mind letting this whole Armageddon business slide, will you? There's such a lot yet to be done in this world, you see. Having it end would be dreadfully inconvenient at this particular moment."

Death took a few moments to reply. Zirah looked up from the sword to cast a glance of inquiry at him, and saw the bar. He frowned.

"Oh dear, what a mess," he said.

YOU, said Death gravely, ARE SO FUCKED.

"It's a little late for that, I'm afraid," said Zirah, in exactly the same preoccupied tone as he had been using for the entire conversation. Having satisfied himself that the sword was as clean as occult intervention could make it, he turned up his palms. The sword vanished.

"Don't let me keep you from your work, now," he said. The light glinted off the pair of silver scales in his hands. "I expect I'll see you again soon."

YES, said Death. YOU WILL.


	12. Chapter 11

CHAPTER 11 

Adam Young woke up on Saturday morning the same way he always did. 

He clung to sleep as long as he could, fighting valiantly against the sunlight striking his face and the consciousness of a stirring world outside, beckoning with the promise of a new day's worth of adventures. Then an explosion of awakeness behind his eyes -- a sudden glorious realisation that he was alive, that it was Saturday, that his sister Sarah would finish the sugar-frosted chocolate cereal if she got up first -- and Adam vaulted out of bed, eyes half-open, a stray limb knocking Dog in the side. Dog whined and snuggled deeper into the bed clothes. 

"Wake up, you lazy Dog," said Adam heartlessly. He believed in disciplining his pets. He had once trained a beetle to feed only at breakfast, lunch and dinner, in accordance with civilised convention, by dint of only giving it food at those times. The beetle had later escaped its stifling life of routine through a hole in its match-box, but Adam always considered it one of his successes in animal husbandry. 

But for once he did not proceed immediately to scramble into his clothes and rush downstairs for the television. 

He was conscious of a sensation of dissatisfaction. 

He went to a window and played with a curtain, tugging it experimentally to see if it would come down, and stared at the world outside. 

It was beautiful, of course. It always was. It wasn't _here_ that was the problem. The rest of the world, on the other hand . . . . 

Things sank in with Adam. The new ideas that had seemed so brilliant yesterday had coalesced into a lump that sat in the bottom of his mind. It gave him something of the feeling of having eaten a great deal, and not having digested it very well -- a feeling Adam was extremely familiar with from bygone Christmases. He'd never had it happen to the inside of his head before. 

Sure, there were real witches and aliens and Atlantisans and secret societies that ran the world, and that was great. But there were _also_ whales that were dying off one by one, and nuclear power plants that radiated at things and made them ill, and acres of forest being cut down, and that was not so great. 

Adam had never seriously considered the state of the environment before. Now it worried him. 

He'd never really believed that other places were that much different from Tadfield -- or, indeed, that there was anywhere that _wasn't_ like Tadfield. Oh, there were other places on TV, of course, and they were as different as you could imagine, but that was television. It wasn't real. If you'd asked Adam what he thought, say, America was really like, _really_, he would have envisioned a Tadfield going on forever in every direction; a Tadfield stretched to fit the space America took up on the map, but still recognisably itself. 

When he saw acres of forests going down before Big Business and the hamburger-eating peoples of the world, therefore, he saw Tadfield denuded of its trees and hedges; he saw fields where the Them held meetings and competed and explored stripped and barren; he saw his world, _his_ world, wrecked by a lot of grown-ups who didn't know anything about anything important. 

It was a right mess, no two ways about it. It was jolly unfair, thought Adam crossly, that people'd gone and taken such a brilliant world and poked holes in its ozone and dumped oil in its seas and started killin' off everythin'. Someone ought to do somethin' about it. 

_He_ ought to do somethin' about it . . . . 

The sky was still blue, but the trees bent of a sudden under a whipping wind. In the distance, thunder rumbled. 

It was going to be a long day.

* * *

Zirah did not wake up on Saturday morning, because he had not slept. He sat in a coffee-shop somewhere in a small South Asian country suffering its worst drought in 30 years. 

The UN was having trouble getting supplies to its starving population, obstructed by a belligerent geography and a corrupt government. The faces surrounding Zirah were thin and hollow, their eyes weary. 

Zirah offered one a Rich Tea biscuit. 

He was feeling uncommonly pleased with himself, with the biscuits, and with the bemused cup of rather decent tea he was having. Neither the biscuits nor the tea had existed before Zirah had walked into the shop, but Zirah thought his slight manipulation of reality was justified. There was nothing better than a nice cup of tea and a biscuit for setting a soul up. And he deserved some setting up. He had done an excellent night's work. 

"Oh, yes," he said to the man warily chomping on the biscuit. "I should think there'll be an improvement soon. It can't last for long now." 

The man did not seem particularly convinced. 

"I want only for my children to survive the night," he said. Zirah already knew about his wife, his farm, his children, and their respective ages, genders and special areas of genius. He nodded sympathetically. 

"Yes. I quite see," he said. "I'll try my best. But as for the, ah, rain situation, I shouldn't worry any more if I were you. I fancy there'll be a change soon." 

He got up, creaking. 

"Well, I must be going," he said. "Enabling people to survive the night is no easy business, you know. It's been lovely talking to you. I do hope your wife's skin condition gets better." 

He left the country, his heart light within him. 

On the table he had vacated, amidst the biscuit crumbs and tea cups, the shattered scales of tarnished silver he had left behind turned black. The patrons had just started to crowd around the table when another, greater phenomenon arrested their attention -- a fat _plop_ on the zinc roof. 

In a minute the plop had turned into a furious, thought-obliterating rattle, and the wind was howling through an empty restaurant. Outside, it rained. 

Inside, the scales disintegrated, and the wind swept the table clean of the ashes and the crumbs, until only the scattered cups remained to show Zirah had been there.

* * *

In Jasmine Cottage, Newt and Anathema held hands under the blanket, half-drowsing and afraid. It was very quiet.

* * *

Caphriel hadn't slept either. He wouldn't have been able to remember how, even if he had wanted to try. 

He sat at Anathema's table, absorbed in the massive tome before him. 

He had forgotten to switch off the desk lamp as the dawn crept over Tadfield, and the orange light made the sunshine look pale as it slanted in through the window. Caphriel ignored it. 

He was glowing slightly. 

Contrary to the belief under which Newt and Anathema were currently shaking, what might be called the human part of Caphriel had not gone away. Under the cold, terrifying beauty of an angel on a mission, he was still himself. He was more himself than he had ever been. 

The tiny part that always watched his own mind thinking, the only part capable of self-analysis at the moment, was not surprised that he hadn't been more himself before. It wasn't an enjoyable experience. 

Once in a while the silence was disturbed by the crackle of a page turning by itself. Caphriel did not move. 

Silence. And inside Caphriel's head, all the demons of Hell, not to mention some specially made up by humans for such occasions, shrieked like it was the last day of the world.

* * *

He burst into Anathema's bedroom two hours later. 

"Get up," he said. "Come on!" 

"Did you find something?" said Anathema. 

"I know where it is," said Caphriel. "We have to go now. Things are moving. Hurry!" 

"But I haven't got any trou -- " Newt stopped, distracted by the thing in Caphriel's hand. "You're bringing _that_?" 

Caphriel looked at the walking stick. 

"I have athlete's foot," he said. 

"But walking sticks don't help when you have athlete's foot," Newt objected. 

"Well, I have a bad back," said Caphriel. 

"But you're an _angel_ -- " 

"Look, this is all very fascinating, but the world is ending in less than ten hours," said Anathema. "Could we please get a move on?" 

"But the walking stick -- " 

"Who cares about the walking stick?" Anathema exploded. "He can bring along a whole goddamn tree if he wants! Just put on your trousers, will you?" 

"Right," said Newt. 

There was a brief silence. 

"Ah," said Newt, "this would be easier if, ah, Caphriel -- ?" 

"Oh. Right," said Caphriel. "I'll, uh, wait for you outside, will I?" 

"Thank you," said Newt.

* * *

Pollution's last words may be of interest here. 

He writhed on the bank of a river rainbow-bright with grease, his face flickering like a television screen as old selves rose through the mists of the past to claim dominion of his weakening body. Beside him, Zirah sat on the grass with his legs stretched before him, playing with a crown. 

He seemed to be trying to make a bird out of it. The crown bent in a way metal shouldn't have been able to. 

"Oh bugger," muttered Zirah when a point poked him in the hand. 

"It's the head," he added confidentially to the thrashing thing by his side. "I can never get the head to look right." 

He held the crown away from himself, and inspected it. 

"Are the wings supposed to lift when you pull the tail, or is it the other way around?" he asked. 

Pollution had other things on his mind, however. 

"Why . . . " The voice dipped alarmingly, from tenor through baritone to a growl no human would have been able to understand. If you could have compressed the dying agony of a mountain as it was eroded over millennia, and recorded the low, rumbling scream, it would have sounded like that. "Why are you doing this? Armageddon . . . " 

"Is basically just a fancy name for a really big war," said Zirah. He crumpled a wing in his distraction. Pollution howled. 

After Zirah had tsked over his own carelessness and straightened out the wing -- this involved some more screaming on Pollution's part -- he went on briskly, 

"A really big war. And I've seen more than enough wars in my time, thank you. No, it's got to stop. It's no way of doing things at all." 

"Without the war," hoarsed Pollution, "Hell cannot triumph over Heaven. Or even . . . the other way around. Nobody . . . wins." 

Zirah put his hand on Pollution's white hair, looking down at him with a wonderful compassion in his eyes 

"Oh, my dear," sighed Zirah. His grip tightened. Pollution screamed. "If somebody gets to win, somebody else has got to lose. And loss isn't worth the winning. It's too high a price." 

He bent his ear to Pollution's mumble, but it didn't seem to contain anything to the point. Zirah shrugged, and yanked the fair head so that his lips were at Pollution's ear. 

"If you had ever lost," whispered Zirah. "You'd know. _No_ triumph is worth the loss." 

"Please," said Pollution monotonously, "please . . ." 

Zirah let go off his hair, and bringing up his free hand, ripped the origami bird to shreds. There was a scream, an evil-smelling burst of flame where Pollution had been -- 

And then there was nothing but the breeze. 

It was a pity, Zirah thought. It had been the best bird he'd ever managed to fold. There had been recognisable wings and everything. He really would have to try it again someday.

* * *

And in an abandoned quarry in the heart of Tadfield, the Them were struggling with an increasingly alien Adam, who didn't want to play or watch sheep-dipping or do anything but _talk_, in a way that made Brian, Pepper and Wensleydale draw back as one grubby child. 

Even so, they were trying their best to play along. The problem was, Adam wasn't much of a listener even at the best of times. 

And these were not the best of times. There wasn't a word for the kind of times they were. 'Bad' didn't even begin to cover it. 

"But what's wrong with _this_ world?" argued Pepper, stubborn even in the face of looming terror. "I like this world." 

"Me too," said Brian valiantly. "It's n-not bad, this world." 

"But it could be so much better," said Adam. None of them were looking at his eyes. One glimpse had been enough. 

"You jus' wait," he said. "You jus' wait and see. It's goin' to be _brilliant_ . . . "

* * *

"And the ley-lines converging on Tadfield," snarled Anathema, putting her shoulder to the door of the Wasabi and shoving vainly. "I should have _known_! And he looked so ordinary . . ." 

"That's the point," said Caphriel coolly. He reached over her head, and touched the door with a barest brush of fingertips. It swung open. Anathema cast him a glare that would have stripped paint off a wall, and burst out of the car, her feet already cycling madly in the air before they hit the ground. She shot off towards what she'd told Caphriel was called in local parlance The Pit. 

"I don't understand," said Newt. Caphriel seemed to think he'd explained everything satisfactorily, and Anathema apparently agreed, but Newt hadn't spent the last six millennia -- or even nineteen years -- of his life swotting up on the last days of the world. He was at sea, and it was a sea full of hungry serpents and hidden whirlpools. "Who is he? What's wrong with looking ordinary?" 

Caphriel told him. 

". . . Oh," said Newt. "What are we going to do once we find him?" 

"Leave that to me," said Caphriel. 

"Yes, but -- " Newt hesitated. 

Several thoughts were circling around his head. The chief among them was, _He's an _angel_. You don't piss off an angel. Anyway, he probably knows what he's doing. He's an angel . . ._

The other thoughts were quieter, and went to the tune of, _But you don't know what _you're_ doing. Maybe you'd better find out._

It was all very well for the angel; he had a divine mandate to fall back on. Newt only had his conscience. 

"But," he said again. The stone-coloured eyes turned on him. He faltered, but went on. "What are you -- are we -- are you really going to kill him?" 

"That was the idea, yes," said Caphriel. 

"But," said Newt. "He's eleven." 

"You're never too young to end the world," said Caphriel. 

"I -- but -- " 

"I'm an angel," said Caphriel, and his voice wasn't anything that could have come out of a human throat. The echoes bounced off the storm-wracked sky and shook the ground. "This is my job. _Leave it to me._" 

Newt opened his mouth, then closed it. There didn't seem to be anything to say. 

"Don't worry. There's not long to go now," said Caphriel. His face was as blank and calm as a still pool. "It'll all be over soon." 

He turned and strode away in the direction Anathema had gone. Newt followed. 

"That's what I'm afraid of," he muttered.

* * *

Adam stopped talking. 

The Them weren't reassured. It would have taken quite a lot to reassure them by now, and mere silence wasn't going to do it, even if it meant that the flow of worrying ideas had paused. Adam acting like himself again would have helped, but his eyes were grey and cold and he didn't move like a human should. He was nobody the Them knew. 

He moved unlike a human now, whipping around with a grace of a striking cobra, too fast for the Them's eyes to follow. His face hardened. 

The old Adam -- the real Adam, the Them were thinking -- scowled when he was angry. This one didn't. There wasn't enough scowl in the world to fit the vastness of his rage. 

"Someone's coming," he said. 

"You told us that already," said Wensleydale. "You said your friends were comin' . . ." 

"This ain't them," said Adam. "He's not supposed to be here!"

* * *

Anathema was standing outside the quarry. Even after only two days, Newt had already got quite good at reading her back: it spoke now of puzzlement, and a surprising uncertainty. 

Caphriel stopped beside her, his hands in his coat pockets. 

"Can't get in?" He said it as if he were asking for the time. 

"No, it's just -- " Anathema's shoulders drooped. She looked oddly lost without the anger that'd been driving her in all the -- admittedly brief -- time Newt had known her. "He's just a kid. What are we -- how can we -- he's just a _kid_." 

Caphriel tilted his head. Newt and Anathema followed his gaze to the sky, where the massed clouds churned like a child's stomach after a day at a carnival. 

"No, he isn't," said Caphriel. "Not any longer."

* * *

"Grown-ups," said Adam. "Goin' around spoilin' everything. They oughter know when something's none of their business an' keep out, but do they? No. They jus' keep bargin' in and spoilin' things. I dunt see why they ever came up with grown-ups. It seems," he added with passion, "like a waste of good air to me." 

"Is it your dad?" said Pepper. The Them exchanged anxious looks. Adam turning into a stranger and the world into an unfamiliar wilderness was admittedly worrying, but it was still, even now, just Adam. Things couldn't get really bad if it was just Adam. But parental retribution was a _serious_ matter. 

"Ohhh, we're in trouble," said Brian. "We're goin' to _get_ it. They don't even like it when you break their silly windows, they're sure to get mad over us breakin' the world -- " 

"No," said Adam. Now even the Them could hear the rustling of the nettles and adult voices cursing as the intruders came nearer. "Let 'em come. We're not goin' to get into trouble. Don't you worry. We're never goin' to get into trouble again . . ." 

"Oh, really, Adam," said a golden voice. "You should know better than that." 

It was the voice of your favourite schoolteacher, of a well-loved friend seen for the first time after a long, cold time apart, a voice with humour and kindness and a really good education threaded through it, and it stopped Adam dead in his tracks. An arm clamped down on his neck. 

Caphriel burst into the quarry, trenchcoat flying, walking stick held like a weapon. The man holding Adam looked up, and his smile was nearly as bright as the sword he held to Adam's throat. 

"Ah," said Zirah. "_There_ you are." 


	13. Chapter 12

CHAPTER 12 

"There you are," said Zirah, and in that moment, that infinitesimal beat between the sound of that beloved voice and the next thought, Caphriel knew himself for a fool. 

He'd thought he could do this. He'd thought -- he'd been so sure of his purpose, but he hadn't realised what "this" would entail, not until he'd seen Zirah's face and felt the certainty he'd built so carefully shatter. 

He'd thought it would be the child. That would have been bad enough. But of course it wasn't just that, in fact it wasn't that at all, because life was a bitch and God wasn't much better -- 

_Oh God,_ he thought, _spare me this. I'll do anything, anything else -- _

But there was nothing else to do, and he'd known it all along, even if he had never dared face the truth before. 

You knew, Caphriel. This had to happen sooner or later. 

This is going to happen _now_. 

Newt knew the minute everything went wrong. 

Of course, it wasn't as if everything hadn't been wrong before. Everything had been _spectacularly_ wrong. That was the one of the side-effects of its being the end days: things were just basically wrong, without anyone even having to try to make them so. This state of affairs had been a source of considerable discomfort for Newt, who had always believed that things were more or less all right, give or take a few expiring whales and crumbling economies. Finding out that the world appeared to have been _built_ to go wrong had shaken him somewhat. 

But there had at least been a plan to remedy the general wrongness -- well, thought Newt, somebody had seemed to have a plan, even if it wasn't him, and even if the plan had implied more killing of children than he was personally comfortable with. Still, for all its faults, it had been a plan, and he was pretty sure somebody had been going to carry it out. He even had a vague idea that he might have promised to do something to help. 

But that had been before they had stumbled in on a man holding a sword -- a _sword_ -- to a kid's throat, and Anathema had shied, suddenly and violently, and Newt, alarmed, had looked over at Caphriel and realised that something had gone wrong. 

"What is it?" whispered Newt, because he _really_ didn't want either of the things standing in the middle of the quarry to look at him. 

"His _mind_," said Anathema. "His mind's in pieces!" 

"Yeah, well, we already knew he was crazy -- " 

"Not Caphriel," said Anathema. She was speaking very calmly, though her lips were white. Newt wished he could be that calm, then he looked at her eyes and realised it wasn't calmness he was hearing. It was the flatness of terror. Anathema's voice was ironed smooth by the weight of the scream behind it. 

"Anathema -- " 

"We can't fight him, Newt," she said. "We can't do anything to a mind like that." 

"Sure we can," said Newt, with the empty good cheer his mother had taught him was the correct response to complete and utter hopelessness. "Look, Caphriel's just set to do it, with his great big . . . walking stick . . ." 

"No, you don't understand," said Anathema. She clutched his arm. Her fingers were freezing cold. "We can't do anything worse. Not to a mind like that. There isn't anything _more_ that could happen to him . . ." 

"Zirah," said Caphriel. His voice cracked in the middle of the name, humiliatingly, all his angelic composure gone, and Zirah smiled at him -- that beautiful, infinitely familiar smile, that made gentle mockery of the situation, and invited Caphriel to share the joke. 

"I was wondering where you'd got to," he said pleasantly. "Just a moment, dear boy, I must have a word with Adam here first." He turned back to the child, all business. 

"I'm disappointed in you, Adam," he said, and he really did sound disappointed. His voice was the voice of every harassed parent and teacher in history, every loving mentor frustrated by the wilful inadequacies of childhood. You could hear him saying, _No, I'm not angry with you, just . . ._

"Mr. Rah?" said a small voice from a corner of the quarry, but the Antichrist did not speak. He stared up at Zirah, unmoving, his blue eyes wide with -- not fear, but some other emotion, one Caphriel knew intimately. He had almost put a name to it when Zirah said, 

"Now, what's all this about, then?" 

"About?" said Adam. His voice was full of wonder; he didn't seem to consider that fear was an option. His eyes were fixed on Zirah's face, with a glassy fascination. Caphriel, watching the events in a haze of misery, seeing everything as through cracked glass, wondered if Adam even noticed the sword. 

"This ending the world business," said Zirah, and glanced up at Caphriel, his eyes bright with humour, as much as to say, _These crazy kids, whatever will they be getting up to next._ He shook Adam by the shoulder, affectionately. "Haven't you had a good life? Look around you. Can you think of a better environment for a child to grow up in? Lots of trees, country air, all the modern amenities you could need -- and a strong family unit, I made sure of that, you know. And that wasn't as easy as you might think. Lovely people, your mother and father, but they don't like being managed any more than most humans do. 

"His mother," he added to Caphriel, in a confidential tone, "we had a bit of trouble with her. She got it into her head that she wanted a divorce a few years ago -- I think you were seven, Adam -- and I had no end of trouble persuading her she wanted to stay with her family. I can't think where she got the idea from. Those silly magazines she reads, I suppose. Of course, after Adam got a bit older, I could stop worrying about that sort of thing. I could trust him to look after his own upbringing, more or less." 

"The books," said Adam. 

"You didn't really like those, did you?" said Zirah. He seemed genuinely regretful. "Well, perhaps you hadn't quite grown into them yet. I did think it was safe to leave you lot alone by then, but after all, books never did anybody any harm. Maybe it would have helped if you _had_ read them. I was wrong about its being safe to leave you be, wasn't I?" 

Adam was gasping softly. 

"No," he said. "No. I'm sorry, I dint -- " 

"I'm very disappointed, Adam," said Zirah gently. "I trusted you to do the right thing. All my effort, and what do I come here to find? You about to bring Armagedon upon our heads. Is that any way for a big boy like you to behave?" 

"I dint think -- " 

"Oh, you have to think," said Zirah, and the knuckles of the hand on Adam's shoulder whitened. Adam whimpered. 

"You have to think," Zirah said, "and think about thinking. You have to watch every thought, or everything could go wrong. You weren't careful enough, and look what it's all come to. Look how it's ended . . . " 

"All your effort," said Caphriel, his voice cutting through Zirah's murmur like a knife. "What effort, Zirah?" 

Zirah blinked, his focus dislodged for the moment. 

"Oh -- nothing. Nothing to speak of," he said. "I was just doing my duty. But I _did_ think Adam wouldn't let me down -- " 

"That grave in the cemetery," said Caphriel, knowing even as he said it that Zirah wouldn't understand. Zirah had left thousands of graves behind him, in thousands of cemeteries, and he and Caphriel had never spoken the same language, after all. "How many more bodies lead from there? How many people have you killed since the day you borrowed this?" He shook the walking stick at Zirah. 

Incredibly, Zirah looked annoyed. 

"What on earth are you so cross about?" he said. "It was your idea in the first place. And it's all in a good cause. 

"Anyway," he added conscientiously, "they didn't really count as people. Not all of them." 

Caphriel felt himself start to shake. Adam's eyes widened with fear, and Caphriel forced himself to tamp down on his laughter. 

"I just want to know," he said. "Why? Don't tell me you care about -- all this. Earth. And it's not a whim -- that might have explained the first death, but not eleven years' work. You've never bothered with anything for this long before. You didn't even spend this much time on Sodom and Gomorrah. So why all this? What's it been _for_?" 

Zirah looked at him. For once his eyes were puzzled, and afraid, and Caphriel remembered, with a sudden shocking pain in his chest, how exactly it had felt to fall in love with him. How it had felt to be certain that Zirah could be fixed. 

"I thought it would make a difference," said Zirah. "Nothing else has, but -- He'll see this. He can't _help_ but see. And He'll understand, He'll know that I didn't mean it. He'll see that I'm making amends. It's all I've been doing, ever since -- you can vouch for it, can't you? You've seen it all. Everything I've done is for Him." 

"I've seen it all," Caphriel echoed dully. He didn't recognise his own voice. It came out distorted, bizarrely toneless. "All this for that? Your own salvation? All these years . . . just for that?" 

Zirah stared at him, bewildered. 

"What do you mean?" he said. "I thought you'd understand. I can make him see, Caphriel. I can -- He'll know we're sorry. He'll realise He loves us. He'll -- " He choked on the next word. 

_Forgive,_ thought Caphriel. He didn't have to be told. He'd loved Zirah these six thousand years. 

"I've always had faith," Zirah whispered. "You know that." 

Zirah _had_ him then. Caphriel would have given it all up just to touch him. It wasn't his fault, it was -- he was in so much pain. He'd hurt so much and for so long, without relief, without even understanding why he'd been hurt. Caphriel would have done anything to ease that pain. 

But Zirah was excited. The sword slipped, and a bright line of red slicked Adam's throat. Adam squeaked, jolting Caphriel out of his dream. 

Look at him, with his sword and his shining belief. When was the last time you believed like that in anything . . . angel? You and your walking stick, clenched in your sticky palm. You and your love. As if it proved anything new. 

There's only ever one thing to do, only one truth to follow, and you've always known what it is. 

You have a blunt instrument. You have blood on your hands, splashes from all those times you stood by and watched Zirah kill, and let it go. 

You're an angel. Do your job and _smite_ already. 

_Do your fucking job -- _

The walking stick described a lazy arc as it swung through the air, cutting through history. 

It's amazing what you can turn into an instrument of God, if you put your mind to it. 

"Well," said Newt unsteadily. "That's one thing you could do to him." 

Zirah lay unconscious in the dust, sprawled awkwardly, like a doll flung to the floor. Everybody was very carefully not looking at him. The Them had edged around the quarry, keeping a wary distance from Zirah, and were now huddling anxiously around Adam. 

Caphriel knelt down beside Adam. He'd gone all quiet and angelic again. It was difficult to know whether this was reassuring, or terrifying. 

"Are you all right?" said Caphriel. 

"No," said Adam. Tears ran skin-coloured tracks down his grubby face. "You _hit_ him." 

"I -- what?" 

"It wasn't his fault, an' you hit him," said Adam. "Dint you _see_ him? They'd hurt him, an' it never stopped hurting, an' you went an' hit him. What'd you go an' do that for?" 

"A couple of reasons," said Caphriel evenly. "For one thing, he had a sword to your throat." 

"Yeah," Pepper piped up. "Plus he was creepy." 

"Yeah," chorused Brian and Wensleydale in unison. This was clearly something the Them felt strongly about. 

Adam waved these considerations away impatiently. 

"He couldn't hurt me," he said. 

"Yes, he could," said Caphriel. "Trust me. He could." 

"No, he couldn't," said Adam. "I'm not sayin' he wouldn't've. But he couldn't hurt me." He looked at Caphriel, his blue eyes boring into the back of Caphriel's skull and seeing everything. "You know." 

"Maybe," said Caphriel. "What would you have done if I hadn't hit him?" 

"I'd've stopped him," said Adam. "An' -- an' made it better. I could've -- " 

"No," said Caphriel. "That you couldn't have done. Not even you." 

He got up, moving like an old, old man, as if every year he'd lived was settling into his bones. 

"Leave him to me," he said. "I've seen him for nearly as long as we've both lived. I _know_ him. It's mine to do. It's my _right_." 

"But, but," Adam stammered. "I could -- " 

"I know you could," said Caphriel. "Let me." 

He didn't wait for Adam's hesitant nod before turning and crouching by Zirah, regarding the slack face with an odd blankness. Something about the slump of his shoulders mirrored Zirah's limp sprawl, as if he had been hit too, and Zirah's defeat was his. 

Anathema joined him. Newt was staring at the sky. 

"What are you going to do?" said Anathema. 

"I'll take care of it," said Caphriel, almost indifferently. "Don't worry." 

"Um," said Newt. "Actually, maybe you should worry . . ." 

Anathema followed his line of sight upward. "Newt?" 

"I don't think -- " 

Lightning blazed out of the sky, and the humans in the Pit flung up their hands to shield their eyes. When they dropped their hands, the Pit was a little fuller than it had been before. Adam and Caphriel, wrapped in their respective griefs, didn't seem to notice. 

For a moment there was no sound but the crackle of the flames and Adam's sobs. 

"Huh," said Pepper. "_More_ weird people." The Them moved into a protective cluster, with Adam at their centre. They were growing somewhat jaundiced about creepy grown-ups appearing abruptly in their midst. 

"I am the Metatron," said the man made of golden fire. 

"You lot've all got weird names," said Brian, in a tone that indicated he was in no mood to give them the benefit of the doubt by putting their names down to the eccentricities of their parents. 

"Silenzzz," said Beelzebub. "We have buzinezzz to attend to." 

"Do, you hab'dt," said Adam quietly. A sudden gust of wind set the two columns of fire flickering. 

"I beg your pardon?" said the Metatron. 

Adam blew his nose noisily into his T-shirt, then wiped it clean -- or at least marginally less grubby -- on his sleeve. 

"I said, no, you haven't," said Adam. "You haven't any business here. Leave us alone." 

"Really, young man," said the Metatron, "we understand that you're upset, but we cannot allow a few hitches to hold up the ultimate war of good and evil. There is a Plan -- " 

"There's _lots_ of plans," said Adam. "An' you're followin' the wrong one. Stop messin' around and go home. It's _over_." 

"Your dezztiny," buzzed Beelzebub, but they would never know what he thought of Adam's destiny, because Adam whirled on him and screamed, 

"_Go away!_" 

Lightning split the sky in half, and thunder rumbled through the clouds. Rank upon rank of angels and demons staggered; weapons clattered onto the firmament, and the sound of celestial swearing mingled with the fury of the skies. 

Beelzebub and the Metatron stepped back as one supernatural representative, their flames roiling. 

It began to rain. 

"_Go away!_" shouted Adam. "Always messin' about! I tol' you I wasn't int'rested in your stupid plan, an' I mean it, so take your rotten soldiers an' go play somewhere else! Go on!" 

"But -- " 

"Go away," said Adam. The figures of flame were melting away, and the skies heaved in a way that confused the eye and hurt the brain. "Go away, go away, go away, go _away_ . . . " 

And then there was nothing in the air but rain, and the clouds were only clouds. The Earth was its own again. 

"Adam," said Anathema, after a while. 

"Go away," sniffed Adam. Anathema put an arm around him. 

"Your father's here," she said. 

"Tol' him to go away, too," said Adam. 

"What's been going on here?" said Mr. Young, frowning. "Adam! What have you been -- " 

"Mr. Young, your son has had a long day, and he's very tired," said Anathema firmly. "I think you should take him home." 

Mr. Young stared at the company in bewilderment, his gaze screeching to a halt at Caphriel, still hunkered over Zirah's prone body. 

"But this is outrageous," he sputtered. "I demand to know -- " 

"We'll talk about it in the morning," said Anathema, in a voice like steel. "Right now, you need to see to Adam." 

Mr. Young flung a last glance at Caphriel, but then his eyes tripped over Adam's tear-smudged face, and locked onto the blood drying on his throat. 

"What's this?" He inspected the cut, humphing in an embarrassed sort of way when it was clear that there was no serious damage. "Well -- well. We'd best get this looked to. Your mother will have a fit." 

He ruffled Adam's hair awkwardly, and looked over the rest of the Them. 

"You lot had better come along as well, I suppose," he said. "I'm sure I don't know what your mothers and fathers will say when they see the state of you. Don't drag your feet, I haven't got all day." 

As the sounds of a long-suffering parent chivvying tired, cranky children into a car drifted into the quarry, Newt stopped beside Caphriel. He considered waiting in respectful silence until Caphriel looked up, but that would probably involve waiting a very long time. 

"Need a lift?" said Newt. 

Caphriel spread a pale, long-fingered hand over Zirah's chest. 

"Yeah," he said. Then he looked up, and the smile beneath the sunglasses was wry, though a little tired. "I'll buy you a drink." 

"It's a deal," said Newt. 

The smile widened, and Newt felt a wash of gratitude for the invention of sunglasses. He suspected Caphriel's eyes were nothing any human wanted to see. 


	14. Chapter 13

CHAPTER 13 

When Caphriel got home, Zirah was waiting for him. An ugly bruise snaked across his forehead, but his eyes were calm. 

Caphriel hadn't quite known what to expect. Calm was good enough. Reproach, he thought, was probably too much to hope for. 

"Hey," said Caphriel. He didn't know what to say, but Zirah came close and touched the side of his face with an exquisite gentleness, and he smiled. 

"Look at you," he said, his voice warm with friendly reproof. "You look like you've been dragged through a bush backwards. Here, let me." 

He took Caphriel's coat and hung it up in the wardrobe, talking all the while in a soothing murmur. Caphriel, exhausted, sank into a sofa, letting Zirah divest him tenderly of most of his clothes. 

The background hum of Zirah's voice was heart's ease. Caphriel had fallen asleep to it, got pleasantly drunk to it, sobbed himself to pieces to it, more times than he could count. It was as familiar as the sound of his own voice, much closer and more comforting than the anodyne joy of distantly-remembered hosannas, and Caphriel had never been able to stop wanting it. 

"And I thought that Device girl was a very nice young lady -- amiable _and_ accurate," Zirah was saying happily. "How well she's turned out. Takes after her ancestress amazingly, wouldn't you say? A very forthright young woman. Of course, I don't suppose she would sell me that book of hers." 

Regret shaded his voice. It had been a long eleven years, and great affairs had been afoot, but when you got right down to it, a book was a book. 

Caphriel felt his face twist. He thought he might be smiling. It hurt, but everything hurt. That was how he knew he was doing it right. 

"You left him alone?" Newt had asked him, puzzled. "What if he wakes up?" 

"He'll be there," Caphriel had said, playing the angelic omniscience card, but he hadn't been sure, had he? He'd hoped Zirah would be gone by the time he got back to the flat, hoped Zirah would draw it out, so that Caphriel could hunt him down. He hadn't wanted this to be so easy. 

_Face it,_ thought Caphriel. _You don't want this to be at all._

It was that admission, that tiny betrayal of his purpose, that got Caphriel on his feet. 

He didn't have to think. He'd done all the thinking earlier. He was prepared. 

He couldn't help himself then; he laughed. Zirah glanced up at him inquiringly. 

"Sit down," said Caphriel, giggling. "I'll get you something for your head." 

He shook with giggles as he filled a glass of water at the sink, standing barefoot and shirtless in the cramped, freezing kitchen. He heard snorts of suppressed laughter escape him as he passed a hand over the glass. 

He knew his face was twisting again, but now he didn't know if he was smiling or not. He waited until his expression was smooth again, bent over the glass of water and breathing thickly as if he was drowning. 

Zirah was obediently seated on the sofa, raising an eyebrow at Caphriel as he approached. Caphriel padded over to him, glass clenched in one fist, and knelt over Zirah, straddling him. 

He was quite calm. He had to do this right. 

"Caphriel?" said Zirah. 

"Yes," said Caphriel. He pressed a hand to the side of Zirah's head, curling his fingers around the curve of his skull, and watching Zirah pretend not to feel the shock of cold. The wrench of love under his ribs seemed to belong to somebody else. 

Caphriel bent his head and closed his eyes, brushed his face against Zirah's, felt the tiny, feathery hairs at the hairline brush his eyelids. Zirah's heartbeat thumped through him, steady and familiar. 

He kissed Zirah's nose, each of his ears, his forehead, and finally, his mouth, quirked into a half-smile. He drew back and looked at Zirah. 

There was no need to learn every feature. He would never forget. 

It would be obscene to apologise, but maybe it would be allowed to speak. 

"I'll remember you like this," said Caphriel, and it came out sounding like _I love you_. He did, he _did_ -- 

He upturned the glass on Zirah's face, and watched as it began to blur. 

He was burning: an unbearable, unnatural agony. He knew what Caphriel had thrown on him, but he didn't understand. He shouldn't be burning. Holy water shouldn't _hurt_ him . . . 

Caphriel was gazing at him unblinking, his sunglasses nowhere to be seen. Nothing standing between the merciless knowledge in those eyes and Zirah. 

The truth about Zirah, and why he was dying. 

The spike of pure hatred pushed the words out through the pain. 

"I lied -- " 

"I know," said Caphriel, terrible as an angel. 

Zirah tried to move his mouth, but it wasn't _there_. His face was melting: the horror of it was almost worse than the pain. He reached out, flailing, looking for something to hold on to, but the darkness rose up and dragged him into the roaring abyss. 

The last thing he saw was Caphriel putting his hand up to his own face, and his pure, unironic surprise when it came away wet with tears sent Zirah to death laughing. 

Zirah ended his life on a note of mercy. He did not say "please". 

Caphriel had watched every moment of his death with such a fierce, immovable concentration that his eyes felt stretched when there was nothing to focus on anymore. He stayed kneeling in front of the sofa for -- he didn't know how long. When he got up, his human muscles complained. 

He ignored them. He needed water. Soap and water. 

Leaving the scorched black mess here forever would probably be . . . unhealthy. And Caphriel was going to lead a healthy life now. No more unhealthy obsessions. No more setting his heart on broken angels. No more filth. 

He moved around the flat a little jerkily, every movement as precise as the ticking of a clock. Then he knelt again, not thinking of very much at all, and started cleaning his room of Zirah. 

He was going to do his job. He was going to be _good_ at it. And now he'd be doing it in a world that was just a little cleaner than it used to be. 

His right. He wouldn't have let anyone else do it. 

He finished the work, scrubbed his hands raw, stumbled into his bedroom and climbed into bed and buried himself under the sheets and _screamed_. 

Stars quivered, cars veered and crashed, planets were rocked out of their orbits, babies all over the world spontaneously burst into tears, volcanoes erupted, the shining streets of Heaven cracked. Nobody heard him. 

Caphriel cried: huge, racking sobs that scraped out of his throat and left it raw. Oh God, if he could have Zirah back, he'd do anything, let anything pass, fuck the world, fuck his job, it didn't matter, nothing mattered except . . . 

The voice was low, but it cut through the storm with piercing clarity, as it always would. 

"You dint have to do that," said Adam Young's voice in Caphriel's head. 

Caphriel vaguely remembered having pride. He couldn't find any space for it inside himself now. He could barely find space inside himself _for_ himself. The old Caphriel would happily have cursed out the most powerful being on Earth. This one just closed his eyes and thought: an image. A tombstone with one date. They'd only needed one. 

"I know," said Adam. "But you dint have to do it, all the same. I -- I could've done it. I could've made it so he'd never been born -- " 

"No," snarled Caphriel. "It was mine to do. My _right_." 

"But you -- " 

"I love him," said Caphriel. "Loved. Loved him. I wouldn't have let -- nobody else would have cared as much." 

Adam was quiet for a while, and Caphriel almost thought he was gone. But then he spoke again. 

"I could give him back to you," he said. He sounded very young. "If you want." 

Caphriel turned his face to his pillow. His hands fisted on the sheets. 

"D'you want him back?" said Adam. The sheets tore. 

"Yes," said Caphriel, "_yes_ -- " 

"Then -- " 

"But you're not going to," said Caphriel. "You're going to get out of my head and go -- do your homework, or whatever it is you're supposed to be doing right now. I'm going to be fine." 

"No, you're not," said Adam. 

Caphriel looked out over the years before him, every day and week and month stretching empty and clean. They looked very bleak. 

Tomorrow he would leave this flat to the mercies of its new owner, and find somewhere new to stay, somewhere Zirah had never been. He'd make the time to _burn_ that fucking walking stick. He didn't feel like he could go near a book ever again, but somebody needed to do something about the bookshop. Maybe he could burn that down too, if he could think of a sufficiently angelic excuse for arson. 

The day after that, and the day after _that_ . . . he could handle them. He could live without Zirah. It hurt, but that was how he knew he was doing it right. 

"I'm not," said Caphriel slowly. "But I'm going to be. Eventually." 

He waited until Adam's presence had faded, perplexed and reluctant, from his mind, before shoving his fist against his mouth. 

"Fine," repeated Caphriel. He shuddered with the force of the next sob, letting out a choking sound that might have been a laugh. 

Fine, he was going to be fine, but eventually was going to take a very long time and for now . . . for now he could hide under the blankets and forget that he'd burned all his bridges, that he'd put things right, that he'd made the world a better place. For now he could lie to himself, tell himself that it was never going to get better, and that he was always going to hurt like this. 

Caphriel drew an arm across his eyes, and prepared to wait out the night. 

Tomorrow could be the first day of the rest of his life. 


	15. Epilogue

EPILOGUE 

"I lied no more than you did," he said, but it was to no-one. 

He was alone. Black sand rustled beneath his feet, rolling dunes of it stretching away in every direction. The blackness that rose from the horizon was studded with stars, millions of tiny beacons in a limitless night sky. 

He blinked, but no voices rode the air, and there was silence in his head. There was, for the first time in a very long time, nobody around but himself. 

Except for the seven-foot-tall hooded skeleton, of course. 

"Azrael?" he said. 

I TOLD YOU WE WOULD SEE EACH OTHER AGAIN, said Death. 

"You did? Oh." This necessitated some thinking. "We've seen each other before, d'you mean?" 

YES. 

"Ah." He did some more thinking. "In that case . . . would you happen to know what my name is?" 

YOUR NAME? 

"It starts with a 'Z'," he said uncertainly. "I think." 

AN 'A', I THINK YOU'LL FIND, Death suggested. 

"Oh," said Aziraphale. "Of course. Thank you. How silly of me to have forgotten." 

'SILLY' IS PERHAPS SOMETHING OF AN UNDERSTATEMENT IN THIS CASE, said Death, as dryly as only a skull could speak. 

Aziraphale stared across the vast black desert. There were great dark shapes that might have been mountains in the distance, and silent flashes of white that looked like lightning. A path uncurled across the sands, leading towards the unknown. 

He was beginning to remember a great many things. Very few of them were pleasant. 

"I'm a demon," he said wonderingly. It occurred to him that this was the first time he had ever heard his own voice use the word to describe himself. He'd always thought admitting it would be a terrible thing, but now that he had, the word was nothing of the sort. It sounded a little lost, but true. 

"I've been to Heaven, and I've been to Hell, and I've seen everything in between," said Aziraphale. "Where does a demon go after that?" 

A VERY LONG WAY, said Death. 

Aziraphale looked at the path. 

"I see," he said. 

He was beginning to feel -- not happy, because the memories were crowding thick upon him now -- but hopeful. The desert was empty and clean enough that Aziraphale felt safe, even from the sludge that stirred in his head, and the path seemed to run on forever. Maybe that would be long enough for the amount of thinking he was going to have to do. 

"Where does it go?" he asked. 

THERE ARE MORE THINGS BESIDES HEAVEN AND HELL, said Death, THAN ANY PHILOSOPHY COULD POSSIBLY COMPREHEND. 

Aziraphale waited, but he didn't seem to feel like elaborating. 

"Which means . . . ?" Aziraphale prompted. 

EVEN I DO NOT KNOW, Death admitted. YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO FIND THAT OUT ON YOUR OWN. 

"I see," said Aziraphale again. He began to smile. It was a normal sort of smile, with nothing superlative about it whatsoever. 

"Do you know," he said, "I think I can do that." 

GOOD LUCK, said Death. 

"Thanks," said Aziraphale. "I expect I'll need it." 

He started down the path. 

_An end._


End file.
